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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?

#71

Post by efitz »

bakugo wrote: post #70
efitz wrote: post #65

A paid web could eliminate the ad ecosystem and all its toxicity (surveillance technology, etc.) I don't see any solution that was based on customer goodwill ("that was cool, here's $1") as something that there is much demand for. What we need is a browser-mitigated micropayment ecosystem. Maybe browser vendors could come up with a standard where you can "charge up" your account like a prepaid phone card, and then wh…

> A paid web could eliminate the ad ecosystem and all its toxicity (surveillance technology, etc.) I don't know how anyone can still live under this delusion when we're currently seeing multiple paid streaming services putting ads on their paid plans that were advertised as ad-free. Corporations will never be happy with the profit they're making. If they can make you pay AND show you ads, they will.

OK fair enough.

As an aside, I don't think that's greed, I think it's perverse incentives - e.g. if a VP wants that big stock bonus next year, they have to figure out how to cause x% revenue growth, rinse and repeat. Sooner or later you hit market saturation and have exhausted all the easy, user-friendly solutions.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#72

Post by nerdo »

kerkeslager wrote: post #48
nerdo wrote: post #34

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

What happens now when money gets sent to websites that host hate speech? Twitter/X hosts plenty of hate speech and is the #6 site in the world according to Wikipedia currently.

In the US the receiver gets unbanked without warning or explanation and permanently loses the ability to accept money through any service via systems like MATCH.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#73

Post by imiric »

efitz wrote: post #65

A paid web could eliminate the ad ecosystem and all its toxicity (surveillance technology, etc.) I don't see any solution that was based on customer goodwill ("that was cool, here's $1") as something that there is much demand for. What we need is a browser-mitigated micropayment ecosystem. Maybe browser vendors could come up with a standard where you can "charge up" your account like a prepaid phone card, and then wh…

> Maybe browser vendors could come up with a standard where you can "charge up" your account like a prepaid phone card

This will, sadly, never happen. When an adtech giant controls not only the world's most popular web browser, but also has major power in directing the future of the web itself, there's no scenario where they would voluntarily align against their own business interests.

Brave actually has a browser that does what you say, but it will never gain major adoption, either from web users or sites. Course correction of a ship that has sailed long ago, and is run by people who benefit from its current direction, will never happen.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#74

Post by BlueTemplar »

michaelt wrote: post #42
TillE wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even those are solvable problems, the real issue is social. There's a reason Flattr failed and Patreon has been a huge success. People would rather personally support a handful of creators at $5/month than put the equivalent money in a tip jar at a bunch of faceless websites.

> Even those are solvable problems, Are they? Historically, there have been a lot of people eager to erect barriers to make payments difficult for those who want to gamble, sell porn, buy porn, donate to controversial political causes, avoid taxes, sell drugs, buy drugs, etc etc So a system that lets me send $40/month of untraceable cash to strangers on the internet might face a lot of opposition.

You are the one that added the "untraceable" requirement.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#75

Post by fragmede »

efitz wrote: post #65

A paid web could eliminate the ad ecosystem and all its toxicity (surveillance technology, etc.) I don't see any solution that was based on customer goodwill ("that was cool, here's $1") as something that there is much demand for. What we need is a browser-mitigated micropayment ecosystem. Maybe browser vendors could come up with a standard where you can "charge up" your account like a prepaid phone card, and then wh…

Unfortunately, the Visa Mastercard duopoly charges fees which make this impractical, which means that via a cryptocurrency is how this would be implemented given today's technology.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#76

Post by ertian »

bakugo wrote: post #70
efitz wrote: post #65

A paid web could eliminate the ad ecosystem and all its toxicity (surveillance technology, etc.) I don't see any solution that was based on customer goodwill ("that was cool, here's $1") as something that there is much demand for. What we need is a browser-mitigated micropayment ecosystem. Maybe browser vendors could come up with a standard where you can "charge up" your account like a prepaid phone card, and then wh…

> A paid web could eliminate the ad ecosystem and all its toxicity (surveillance technology, etc.) I don't know how anyone can still live under this delusion when we're currently seeing multiple paid streaming services putting ads on their paid plans that were advertised as ad-free. Corporations will never be happy with the profit they're making. If they can make you pay AND show you ads, they will.

That's why it has to be lightweight. The thing that would drive prices down and keep ads at bay is competition. Since setting up a new streaming service is difficult-bordering-on-impossible, the players are protected from competition and can squeeze their customers. In other markets, if you had a lightweight payment system that isn't just a component of a walled garden (ala Medium or YouTube), you could see actual competition. Then, if some player started showing ads or raising prices, people could just up and move elsewhere.

Imagine the early internet if we didn't have HTTP & HTML. It would have been a bunch of specialized AOL- or CompuServ-type walled-garden services, each of which could have wrung their customers dry. That's the world we ended up with in streaming. But the WWW doesn't have a mechanism for simple payments, so payment infrastructure can be used to lure and trap content creators. That's why we need a simple, lightweight, portable and open payment mechanism, to complement open web protocols.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#77

Post by ozr »

fragmede wrote: post #75
efitz wrote: post #65

A paid web could eliminate the ad ecosystem and all its toxicity (surveillance technology, etc.) I don't see any solution that was based on customer goodwill ("that was cool, here's $1") as something that there is much demand for. What we need is a browser-mitigated micropayment ecosystem. Maybe browser vendors could come up with a standard where you can "charge up" your account like a prepaid phone card, and then wh…

Unfortunately, the Visa Mastercard duopoly charges fees which make this impractical, which means that via a cryptocurrency is how this would be implemented given today's technology.

This is why you'd 'charge up' some prepaid store.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#78

Post by kerkeslager »

nerdo wrote: post #72
kerkeslager wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens now when money gets sent to websites that host hate speech? Twitter/X hosts plenty of hate speech and is the #6 site in the world according to Wikipedia currently.

In the US the receiver gets unbanked without warning or explanation and permanently loses the ability to accept money through any service via systems like MATCH.

Right... so far this has happened to 3 sites in the top 10 of this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-visited_websites

2 of the sites in the top 10 of that list have been criticized for hosting hate speech.

The 3 sites which have had trouble receiving payments don't overlap with the 2 which have been criticized for hosting hate speech.

And notably, many sites which are more hateful than those and have experienced deplatforming efforts, are still thriving, such as KiwiFarms and 4Chan. As it turns out, there are enough hateful people out there that they can manage technical/financial solutions to deplatforming efforts.

Hate speech is becoming a go-to justification for policing the internet, but the reality is that those policies are more effective in harming user privacy and freedom than they are in curbing hate speech.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#79

Post by imiric »

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…

If I understand your proposal correctly, why would advertisers be needed at all if users had the ability to directly pay for the content they consume? You'd just be giving adtech even more power over the user experience, something that adtech always prioritizes, right? :) Users are not even customers to them, but a shiny gold rock they can extract value from.

https://piped.video/watch?v=uSudkID3zJM

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#80

Post by CaptainFever »

seanwilson wrote: post #5

> It needs to be built into the browsers and web standards such that it’s incredibly smooth and fast. I wanna send $1 to a website, it happens instantly and anonymously, and the developer can do things around this. Like unlock features! For instance, stop showing ads, offer more complete downloads, unlock tutorial courses, etc. Make it easier and faster than using a credit card. Are there any promising avenues toward…

This is literally the use case for cryptocurrencies -- digital cash, not investments.

In the more... questionably legal parts of the web, Monero is pretty common since you can't use regular banking anyway. The fees are pretty low, at around USD0.001 IIRC.

There's also Nano (feeless) but it doesn't seem to be very popular, unfortunately.

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