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Flattr is closing down (2023)

flattr.com

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Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#171

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

opengears wrote: post #114
ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not seeding a torrent requires more effort than seeding, it's also basically free.

This argument does not take bandwidth into account. If the goal is to download a lot of different files, you will be effectively limiting your download with keeping (especially very popular) torrents seeded. I stand corrected if somebody could please disprove me.

As the other commenter said, upload and download speeds are separate. And if you mean data caps, most internet connections have "unlimited" bandwidth unless you're torrenting off your phone.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#172

Post by takinola »

Micropayments struggle because they add friction to the process of consuming content. Right now, if I see a great blog post, video, whatever, I spend a bit of time taking it in and then move on. With micropayments, I now have to think about how much it is worth to me (is this blog post, comment, sketch worth $0.50? $0.10?). You just turned a brainless moment of enjoyment into a value judgement where I now have to become a critic and try to create some kind of inner framework for assigning value, etc.

Ads avoids all these by (relatively) frictionlessly converting attention into money. Subscriptions bundle the friction into a single event (the conversion) and remove it for all future interactions. Micropayments are just constant papercuts.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#173

Post by amadeuspagel »

freediver wrote: post #127
amadeuspagel wrote: post #13

Flattr is the kind of idea that sounds great, that people love talking about - if only they could make a small donation to every website they liked - but that doesn't work because people are fundamentally too selfish. This is why ads are the only viable business model for a kind of "ephemeral website" - something you visit only briefly, derive some short knowledge or pleasure from until you follow a link somewhere el…

I'd like to push back on this. It is not that people are too selfish, but that there is not much content truly worth paying for. This is because ads proliferated not just creation of giant amounts of content but they also incentivize quantity over quality. Second thing that is holding this back is no seamless way to send a payment from your browser to the website (owner). This has to be native in the browser, user-ce…

What does it mean for content to be truly worth paying for? That someone pays, voluntarily, after already having consumed the content? How could we distinguish selfishness from content not worth paying for?

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#174

Post by lelanthran »

k__ wrote: post #64
amadeuspagel wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I don't want to solve that problem. I don't want to have a parasocial relationship with the author of every blogpost that I read.

To quote something I literally read 5 minutes ago in "Perhaps the Stars": "everyone has relationships with people far away, who inspire, entertain, role models, and also the people we work so hard for: fans, viewers, the next generation, kids somewhere, posterity. I think those asymmetrical relationships are part of what it means to be human, part of the teamwork. Humanity is teamwork. And the asymmetry doesn’t for a…

That's just sugar coating hero worship and trying to make it more acceptable.

Just because something is written in flowery language doesn't make it profound.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#175

Post by amadeuspagel »

lefixx wrote: post #167
amadeuspagel wrote: post #13

Flattr is the kind of idea that sounds great, that people love talking about - if only they could make a small donation to every website they liked - but that doesn't work because people are fundamentally too selfish. This is why ads are the only viable business model for a kind of "ephemeral website" - something you visit only briefly, derive some short knowledge or pleasure from until you follow a link somewhere el…

its not fair to call people shelfish when the only subscription option given to them is 10000x the value of an ad shown to them. Flattr was a good idea and if it was integrated to youtube I would have easily pay more than the ads would have.

I'm not sure how to talk about this without using the word selfish. It's not an insult. Most people are mostly selfish. There's no way of talking about the world without taking that into account.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#177

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

egypturnash wrote: post #164
notatoad wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What advocates of microtransactions don't see: It turns something that absolutely should not be a commodity (creative work), into a commodity. as an advocate for microtransactions: yes, i see this. but i think you've got it backwards. nobody is "turning creative work into a commodity". it already is, and creators and marketplaces are both happy to treat it like one when they're selling their work. Creatives don't li…

Pff, I love Patreon and I feel like that is basically "micropayments that actually work". If you look at Scott McCloud's original proposal for micropayments ([1], parts 5/6), the only thing that's really not viable is the idea that every reader paying 25¢/mo would work - in practice, transaction fees mean that about $2/mo is the minimum viable payment to actually mean something, especially when you factor in that you…

> in practice, transaction fees mean that about $2/mo is the minimum viable payment to actually mean something

another person who doesn't know about PayPal's micropayment account fees. They save us (ardour.org) about 23c per US$1 transaction, and we get the majority of our income from US$1 transactions. Instead of the usual 3.5% + 49c fixed fee on the order of 30c, PayPal' structure for this is more like 9c fixed + 4.99%.

If I was a believer in some deity that paid attention to such things, I would pray daily that PayPal does not decide to end these at some point.

Good news is that they now offer something called Dynamic Pricing, where instead of maintaining two accounts and choosing which one to use based on the transaction value, they will now do this automatically for you. Subject to approval, they say.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#178

Post by mminer237 »

amelius wrote: post #113
mminer237 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is essentially Brave browser's entire proposition for its existence.

When clicking "Private advertising" on the Brave website you get: > Powerful Ad Formats (...) > Diversify from Big Tech channels, and get the first-mover advantage of advertising in the fastest-growing search engine since Bing. Search ads are privacy-preserving, text-based ads that appear at the top of a user’s search engine results page (SERP). > (...)

Yeah, they themselves serve ads on their search engine. That's wholly separate from Brave Rewards and you can block their ads just the same.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#179

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

night-rider wrote: post #141

A few alternatives for micro donations that people have mentioned: https://ko-fi.com/ https://github.com/sponsors https://www.patreon.com/ https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/ Any others, let me know

https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees#statemen...

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#180

Post by Dylan16807 »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #13

Flattr is the kind of idea that sounds great, that people love talking about - if only they could make a small donation to every website they liked - but that doesn't work because people are fundamentally too selfish. This is why ads are the only viable business model for a kind of "ephemeral website" - something you visit only briefly, derive some short knowledge or pleasure from until you follow a link somewhere el…

I just something I can subscribe to and money goes to sites I visit in a reliable way. And the sites should stop showing me ads, but I'll even take that as optional right now.

Ideally something like youtube premium, but not youtube.

Google ran some services that at a very surface level had the same idea, but actually worked in a messy and bad way, and then they gave up on it. Which is a real shame because they have the ad presence to actually make it work.

Every other attempt I've seen has way too close to 0% of the sites I visit able to receive money.

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