Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

blog.zgp.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 408 posts

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#191

Post by beeflet »

AuthAuth wrote: post #157
beeflet wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problems you describe are technical problems. How do you increase efficiency and avoid charge-backs due to fraud? Perhaps it is enabled by cryptocurrency (some systems like payment channels, RaiBlocks already exist for this). I would go into more detail about this but I think i've already debated you about this already. The entire field of cryptography is about developing technical solutions to previously intract…

But how many people would really go to another site just to save 0.002? I can already go to the internet archive to read paywalled content. If needed and that option will still be available for the people that dont want to pay the 0.002. Its a social problem and all it takes is one player breaking through. People have done this with far far worse things that people thought were unviable socially. Microbetting, microl…

Your response is predicated on the fact that sites like archive.org already exist and don't charge. In a world with accessible micropayments, I think pretty much everyone would charge.

Sites like the internet archive are already funded by donations from viewers like you. I see the scheme as essentially spreading out the donations based on who uses the most bandwidth. It makes it easier for anyone to spin up a mirror of archive.org, and it makes it more secure for sites like archive.org to accept donations.

"Intermediate" micropayment solutions already exist. Anna's archive charges like $5 a month for a "donation" that puts you in a fast lane to download PDFs that you would otherwise have to get from some book site or a scientific journal. I bet they would prefer to charge per-download if they could feasibly do it.

I agree that some (most?) applications of micropayments are really gimmicky. But some applications are naturally suited to micropayments. The advantage of micropayments is that you can interact with ad-hoc vendors without setting up a pre-existing financial trust-relationship. For example, you could be at an bus terminal and have several pop-up vendors for wifi or electricity that charge per MB or per watt-hour. It enables competition.

The more gimmicky applications you mention like hardware subscriptions all involve some element of vendor-lock in that prohibits the advantage of micropayments systems in dealing with ad-hoc vendors. This is more analogous to those in-flight wifi services on airplanes: there is an established financial relationship with the airline and no competition, so there's little use for the low-risk micropayments.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#192

Post by Paracompact »

Gigachad wrote: post #85
makestuff wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this the main complaint people had about cable packages though? People were tired of paying $100/mo and only watching 10 channels out of 150. I came across a startup awhile ago that was handling the micropayments for you and you paid a monthly subscription fee which is similar to what you want. I think the main issue is getting every publisher to agree to onboard to your platform before you have sufficient scal…

It's a misunderstanding of the payment model really. No one watches 150 channels, the pricing is based on you being the average person who watches a subset of them, but it doesn't cost them any extra to provide all of them. Regular users also don't really like usage based fees which is why every consumer plan has a fixed price rather than paying per use. Cloud storage for example charging you for "up to x gb" rather…

How do you explain public utilities? No one has any issue with the fact that flicking a light switch in your home is technically a micropayment, as it consumes extra electricity that comes out in your monthly bill.

I would venture to say that what consumers don't like about micropayments is any combination of the following:

(1) It's a pain in the ass to provide payment info most places, and comes with the looming paranoia that your data is going to be abused;

(2) It's viscerally disgusting when e.g. AAA video game developers expect you not to notice the difference between $100 for marginal extra content, and 100 micropayment charges of $1 for the same amount of marginal extra content;

(3) It's an infohazard to the average person to inform them exactly how much they're spending on each thing in their life, because it tempts them toward a culturally validated budgetary anorexia.

Public utilities avoid (1) because it's a one-time signup with trusted vendors for years of service, they avoid (2) because utilities are priced (somewhat) rationally in nationally standardized ways, and they avoid (3) because utility bills can only get so itemized.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#193

Post by tcfhgj »

airstrike wrote: post #114
rjbwork wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think most people mind ads. Throw up an animated gif or a jpg banner that you serve from your domain. Nobody is blocking that. What people dislike are mountains of javascript that track everything you do across broad swathes of the internet and then sell that to businesses and governments that are effectively engaging in mass psychological experiments on us.

Feels like there's an opportunity for an "ethical ads" platform

Oxymoron

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#194

Post by eek2121 »

the hard part is the noise:

Very few sites offer quality, original, important content.

Nobody wants to pay for a site the repeats the same old stuff that every other site does, especially when those other sites don't have a paywall. This drives the cost of content to zero, which leads companies to rely on ads, and ad blockers to block those ads.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#195

Post by michaelt »

bonoboTP wrote: post #173
contravariant wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a particular part in the discussion that rubs me the wrong way (which is more about micropayments as alternative to ads, rather than micropayments themselves) It tends to go something like, if not micropayments then ads, if not ads then subscriptions. And people dislike subscriptions more than ads, and ads more than micropayments so the conclusion is micropayments. But I don't like the way ads are presented a…

Why would ads go away just because you pay? Print newspapers and magazines have had ads forever and they cost money. Even expensive glossy magazines like National Geographic have full page ads, half page ads, etc. There is no natural law that ads will go away. Ads will only disappear if their presence would make the company lose more customers than they gain on ads. Ads make them money. If people don't mind it so muc…

When people are trying to justify ads, they often lean on "our servers cost $X per month and we have Y journalists paid $Z per month, therefore we need revenue from ads" which makes it sound like they need to raise a fixed, finite amount.

That sounds much more persuasive than "our billionaire owner paid a lot of money for this for-profit business, and he'd really like a return on his investment"

But you're right, of course - the fact someone pays a lot of money for something doesn't mean it won't be plastered with tawdry ads.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#196

Post by davidfischer »

nemomarx wrote: post #180
Loughla wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite forum has ads on every page. One header and one footer. Text only as a link to the site or product being advertised. The advertisers pay the site owner himself. I've bought things from those ads because they're targeting the demographic on that site, not targeting me specifically. They're actually more relevant. Now that's not probably sustainable, but I have to imagine that the roi for the advertisers is…

I don't understand why more companies don't do contextual ads, yeah. Why track users all around the web when you can go to a website about cars and put in car ads, or a website about music and sell concert tickets or etc? You already know everyone on that website is interested in the topic, and the analytics would be much cheaper this way.

They absolutely do. Every sponsorship you see on a podcast or a youtube video or a streamer is a contextual ad. Many open source sponsorships are actually a form of marketing. You could argue that search ads are pretty contextual although there's more at work there. Every ad in a physical magazine is a contextual ad. Physical billboards take into account a lot of geographical context: the ads you see driving in LA are very different than the ones you see in the Bay Area. Ads on platforms like Amazon, HomeDepot, etc. are highly contextual and based on search terms.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#197

Post by vladms »

zeta0134 wrote: post #168
contravariant wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a particular part in the discussion that rubs me the wrong way (which is more about micropayments as alternative to ads, rather than micropayments themselves) It tends to go something like, if not micropayments then ads, if not ads then subscriptions. And people dislike subscriptions more than ads, and ads more than micropayments so the conclusion is micropayments. But I don't like the way ads are presented a…

The irritating thing to me here is that I actually don't mind the concept of advertising. Mostly it's the implementation. Newspaper ads don't bug me one bit, because they're not physically capable of moving, animating, dancing, and trying to get my attention. They're not physically capable of tracking my habits and reporting them back to the mothership. They're just... there. Passive. Occasionally interesting, or at…

But do you think the concept of advertising is the best solution to the problem it tries to solve? I have serious doubts.

Sure, 100 years ago you had no other way to make something known, but today with everybody having a smartphone there might be other ways. I always would like to see reviews of stuff from my immediate network of friends (or, let's say 2-3 connections) - wouldn't that be much better? Of course, the whole ad industry will have zero interest to promote something like this, where they loose control and the process might be actually efficient.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#198

Post by danbruc »

I pay $19 per month to some company X, and company X distributes this money to all participating websites I visit during that month, in return I get ad-free access to all the content. And this is implemented in a way that no website learns who I am and company X does not learn which websites I visited.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#199

Post by akoboldfrying »

contravariant wrote: post #104
dynm wrote: post #65

There is a lot of hate for the idea of micropayments here, so I'd like to offer a counterpoint. I use a service that provides access to a bunch of different LLMs. Each time I call an LLM I, in effect, pay a $0.001 - $0.05 for the response. (Technically, this is implemented as me having to renew earlier.) Each time I make a call, I don't know if the answer will be useful. I don't even know how much it will cost! And i…

There's a particular part in the discussion that rubs me the wrong way (which is more about micropayments as alternative to ads, rather than micropayments themselves) It tends to go something like, if not micropayments then ads, if not ads then subscriptions. And people dislike subscriptions more than ads, and ads more than micropayments so the conclusion is micropayments. But I don't like the way ads are presented a…

Not only news giants need revenue. Everyone producing news needs it, including any hoped-for smaller, more democratised new entrants to the industry.

Where will that revenue come from?

Should we expect high-quality journalism for free?

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#200

Post by hn_acc1 »

bonoboTP wrote: post #173
contravariant wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a particular part in the discussion that rubs me the wrong way (which is more about micropayments as alternative to ads, rather than micropayments themselves) It tends to go something like, if not micropayments then ads, if not ads then subscriptions. And people dislike subscriptions more than ads, and ads more than micropayments so the conclusion is micropayments. But I don't like the way ads are presented a…

Why would ads go away just because you pay? Print newspapers and magazines have had ads forever and they cost money. Even expensive glossy magazines like National Geographic have full page ads, half page ads, etc. There is no natural law that ads will go away. Ads will only disappear if their presence would make the company lose more customers than they gain on ads. Ads make them money. If people don't mind it so muc…

True, but also, businesses have used "coupons" for a long time. I saw one article where this was described as "selling the same product at multiple tiers".

eg. if you're rich, you don't bother with coupons (in general) - your time is more valuable than clipping the coupon and remembering to take it. if you're middle class, you use the coupon to feel like you're getting a deal, but if you forget, oh well. if you're lower class, you wait for a sale and then use the coupon to be able to afford it at all.

Similar with ads - if you won't let me access your site without showing me ads (even with an adblocker) - I really don't need your product that badly. Sell to those who have a lot of spare attention or willpower to look past your ads.

I don't mean I click on ads - EVER - but they're distracting. VERY distracting. I mean, the few times I've had to use yahoo mail from a browser without an ad blocker, it was an unbelievably bad experience. (yes, I still use yahoo. I got at least one of those accounts right around the time "BackRub" was renamed "Google")

Post reply on HN