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What happened with the Web Monetization API?

chriscoyier.net

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Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#31

Post by AndrewStephens »

revscat wrote: post #13
AndrewStephens wrote: post #8

The problems with monetization and micropayments are not technical and no easy-to-use API is going to help with adoption. Dealing with money is a real pain due to fraud, security, and legal compliance and those problems don't go away when the amounts are small.

I mean I’m sure that’s what the processors want people to believe. But even if those problems are difficult, they aren’t insurmountable: I’m sure that libraries would be developed over time that would allow for these things to happen, securely and without error, much as the SSL libraries have developed over the decades.

You have missed my point. Actually carrying out "Shift 10 US cents from Account2732 to Account8462" is trivial. A simple server could deal with 5 million such requests an hour.

Now imagine you had to deal with $500000 moving around your system per hour.

* How many of those are fraudulent?

* How do you handle chargebacks? No one will use your system if you don't support them.

* How do people move money in and (worse) out of their accounts? That means interacting with banking and a small army of accountants.

* 99% of your customers will make $5 a month but 1% will take possibly millions, effectively becoming business partners. Do you police what they are doing? Are they laundering money? What do you do if they come to you asking for reduced rates?

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#32

Post by PretzelPirate »

carlosjobim wrote: post #25
PretzelPirate wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> puts their own ads on top. I haven't used Brave for years and don't own their token, but that's just not how Brave ads work at all. The ads are shown as notifications and aren't replacing ads embedded in websites. Why mislead people?

The browser has a built in ad blocker, effectively removing the ads that pay for a website. To then put your own ads _anywhere_ after that and pretend that you're helping website owners is a scam. Imagine if YouTube started blocking sponsored content and put their own ads there.

You're now making a different argument: it's unethical for an ad blocker to have their own ads?

Why is that? I don't like ads on websites because they track me, slow down loading times, use my data, etc... So I'd like to block them because they're forced on me in the modern web. This ad blocker gives me control of whether I want to see any ads, how often I want to see them, and takes measures to prevent tracking. That seems like freedom and user-friendly behavior.

The fact that the ad blocker doesn't keep all ad revenue is another bonus and I can choose whether I alone earn money from seeing ads that run on my machine, or if I share some of that with creators I appreciate seems like another level of freedom.

I'm not seeing a downside. I can opt out of the ads altogether if I choose. I can even choose to not block ads that aren't trying to exploit me.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#36

Post by carlosjobim »

PretzelPirate wrote: post #32
carlosjobim wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The browser has a built in ad blocker, effectively removing the ads that pay for a website. To then put your own ads _anywhere_ after that and pretend that you're helping website owners is a scam. Imagine if YouTube started blocking sponsored content and put their own ads there.

You're now making a different argument: it's unethical for an ad blocker to have their own ads? Why is that? I don't like ads on websites because they track me, slow down loading times, use my data, etc... So I'd like to block them because they're forced on me in the modern web. This ad blocker gives me control of whether I want to see any ads, how often I want to see them, and takes measures to prevent tracking. Tha…

You are not seeing any downside because you are only thinking about yourself. Somebody made the website that you are visiting and enjoying. They spent time, effort, and maybe some money to make it. And they get paid by ads to keep access free. Now, I know hackers will come screaming about how their human rights are violated by seeing an ad on a webpage. Okay, block the ads then. But for a business to block the ads of other companies and then put their own ads. If you don't see how that is wrong, then I don't know.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#37

Post by teitoklien »

nerdo wrote: post #34

What if money gets sent to websites that host hate speech?

Why do you think anyone reserves the right to block funding to what gov determines as “hate speech”. If someone wants to pay for hate speech they can anyways do it right now with donations.

Ideas like this quickly devolves into gov marking any message that criticizes them as “Hate speech”. Democracies like Japan, to an extent Singapore do that already, officially by law.

Nations like Canada, India, Israel, Hungary, do it indirectly in unofficial but rampant ways.

Speech is not a crime, listening to hate speech and starting to be unjustly hateful towards people is a crime.

Punish the people who discriminate and act on the advice of hate speech. Do not punish speech, or else soon, you’ll get confused when gov starts changing what “hate” means.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#38

Post by peteforde »

I actually had Coil set up on a few of my sites, and I would occasionally get small micropayments showing up in my ledger. I was sad to see it fail, but I also profoundly agree with CC that for the web monetization API to actually work, it needs to distance itself from the crypto/grift ecosystem.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#39

Post by julianeon »

myfonj wrote: post #20

I was ruminating around this topic the other day and came to conclusion it is probably terribly missed opportunity for certain advertising company. Now it sounds super scary privacy-wise, smells monopol-y and overall may not happen anymore (I think), but consider: In situation when "all" users are being in fact "logged into" their service anyway, then features such as - pay to hide ads on this particular web (basical…

I don't think that website really wants to call attention to the fact that it's serving you ads. They want it to be a seamless part of the Internet experience. Ideally, you wouldn't even notice the ads are ads. They don't want to support services that remind you that they're there, and are annoying. And if you want to monetize your site, they already have a preferred solution for you: sign up to show ads and get a check from them.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#40

Post by EGreg »

I think the issue is that micropayments shouldn’t be user-to-website, but rather website-to-website, with users being given some allowances via trustlines to spend.

https://qbix.com/ecosystem

Notice that almost none of the above is “Web3”, but it can use Web3 (or other means) to do periodic settlements between websites.

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