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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?

#91

Post by carlosjobim »

EGreg wrote: post #41
carlosjobim wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just out of curiosity, why are so many people on HN who are against crypto-based payment systems and decentralized networks (always using shibboleths like “scam” and “ponzi”) at the same time so totally for the equally “ponzi” model of advertisers supporting free sites via giant centralized brokers? Most advertisers quickly find out that the ad money is wasted and only the slickest and most misleading campaigns win,…

You're letting your imagination run. I'm not the slightest against crypto. I'm not against people using adblockers and I'm strongly against advertisement online and in other media. But the website owner also needs a chance to be reimbursed for his labour and put food on the table. If he choses to do so with ads, that is his right.

Because people do not donate, even to stuff they love and use a lot. For a company to block those legitimate ads and then put their own, while pretending they are helping website owners - that's a scam. And nobody would swallow it unless it came with the promise of sharing some scam money with the users.

I'm for a free speech internet where users pay a cheap and fair price to creators for content, that's a much better model than ads – and it is probably the future for any quality content.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#92

Post by striking »

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.

Or you could start off with macropayments and make micropayments possible later. Letting perfect be the enemy of the good is how we got here.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#93

Post by johannes1234321 »

internetter wrote: post #24
stevekemp wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flattr tried to do something similar, but yes I agree. It's unfortunate that bitcoin became a hoarding/speculation thing, rather than a useful thing. Decentralized micro-transactions would have been cool had they been used with a decent friendly UI and been integrated into a browser or two as an extension.

> Decentralized micro-transactions would have been cool had they been used with a decent friendly UI and been integrated into a browser or two as an extension. My position on cryptocurrency as well. I think that the ability to send money in this decentralized manner is fascinating. It's too bad it went far, far beyond that. Cryptocurrency should have never tried to replace normal currency, or any of that NFT bs.

Blockchain isn't really the solution there, though.

I don't want a public ledger with all my payments, which tells not only what I consume, but also how much I am able/willing to spend.

And as soon as you are in massmarket you need ways for humans to intervene, for handling complaints, mistakes, whatever or dealing with the unavoidable case that individuals lose their secret keys. Or even cases like medical restriction or inheritance requiring others to take over the funds.

All those things Blockchain purposely and inherently prevents.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#94

Post by johannes1234321 »

Mistletoe wrote: post #26
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…

Of course there is, there are tons of cryptocurrencies that can do this but everyone here hates crypto and throws the baby out with the bathwater and won’t stop parroting “SCAM!” every time they hear the word. It’s too expensive to use on-chain transactions on things like Bitcoin or Ethereum but there are other coins. https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactionfees-btc-eth... You could also use Lightning Network…

Pointing to my comment elsewhere on this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39279246

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#95

Post by carlosjobim »

kerkeslager wrote: post #44
EGreg wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just out of curiosity, why are so many people on HN who are against crypto-based payment systems and decentralized networks (always using shibboleths like “scam” and “ponzi”) at the same time so totally for the equally “ponzi” model of advertisers supporting free sites via giant centralized brokers? Most advertisers quickly find out that the ad money is wasted and only the slickest and most misleading campaigns win,…

A lot of HN works in industries which benefit from advertising. It's motivated reasoning. In general, HN users can be trusted to take the side of corporations over humans in the vast majority of situations. EDIT: Downvoting without giving reasoning just lends further credence to my point that their views are based in selfishness rather than reasoning. ;)

No need to sugar coat it. If that's what you really think, then write it clearly: "Hey guys! Hey my fellow hackers! That poster is a... is a... CORPORATE SHILL!"

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#96

Post by uncletammy »

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…

You've just described the value proposition for bitcoin, a peer to peer electronic cash system. Sadly, bitcoin has been captured by banks and is now only useful for gambling and parasitic investment scams.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#97

Post by mardifoufs »

pelorat wrote: post #47
teitoklien wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, d…

Unfettered speech can lead to a cult following which, as we here in Europe know very well, can be extremely fucking dangerous. Which is precisely why some speech will land you in prison.

Germany had plenty of hate speech laws back when Hitler was elected. Still the question that remains here would be: which government gets to decide what's hate speech? Like even if we could have a payment webAPI that could "block" hate speech (not sure how that would be possible), do we go by the standards of the US? Europe? Russia? How would it work concretely?

Trying to discuss the implications of hate speech for something that would be international is asinine imo, the term basically means everything and nothing (when used in a global context)

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#98

Post by ethbr1 »

uncletammy wrote: post #96
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…

You've just described the value proposition for bitcoin, a peer to peer electronic cash system. Sadly, bitcoin has been captured by banks and is now only useful for gambling and parasitic investment scams.

:/ Distributed ledger technology ever being a viable solution for small, high-frequency transactions seems like a pipe dream.

I'm aware that tremendous effort has been and is being invested in that.

But I have yet to be convinced efforts in that direction won't all boil down to "trading decentralization for efficiency."

In which case, why not use a centralized, much more efficient solution?

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#99

Post by jacobn »

sofixa wrote: post #9
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…

> Are there any promising avenues towards microtransactions that gets around small card transactions getting a hefty fee One option is to have regulations about card fees, which is the case in the EU (0.2% for debit, 0.3% for credit). Another is to use an alternative payment method, like India's UPI or Eurozone's SEPA which are free and instantaneous.

SEPA via Stripe takes on average 5 days, max 14 according to their docs - instantaneous would be a game changer?!

https://stripe.com/docs/payments/sepa-debit

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