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Cloudflare to introduce pay-per-crawl for AI bots

blog.cloudflare.com

281–290 of 317 posts

Re: Cloudflare to introduce pay-per-crawl for AI bots

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose "credit system" is indeed more accurate than "fee", it's just that I personally would set it at a flat rate and then stop thinking about it, so it would feel like a sort of admission-to-the-internet to me. As for bandwidth and storage costs... that could just be rolled into the same attribution/payment scheme. If content is not propagating well because too few people are hosting it, then I'm ok with allocat…

A flat fee payment structure is very very, very, different from a credit based system. You might as well be conflating it with the current system. That's how very different flat fee vs credit system are. > It's just that I personally would set it at a flat rate and then stop thinking about it, so it would feel like a sort of admission-to-the-internet to me. That doesn't matter. A credit system is like an hourly chang…

> What if you watch a "Just released" movie that costs $10 credits on the first day of the month.

Well then at the end of the month, my usage will be used to allocate my media budget to the content creators, so I unless I consumed no other media that month, I guess I'm sending them less than $10 to the creators of that "Just released" movie. That's unfortunate, but it's still likely to be more than they're getting from the artificial-scarcity-enforced-by-middlemen-who-take-a-cut thing that we're currently doing.

Perhaps my friends should look at how much I'm spending on content and shame me for having it only be $10. And the people who consume my content should perhaps update their settings to pay me less for it on account of me being a stingy sort of participant. Or maybe they stop propagating my content altogether. There is a lot of room to explore incentives that might might work.

Re: Cloudflare to introduce pay-per-crawl for AI bots

#282
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This should be the standard business model on the web, instead of the advertising middlemen that have corrupted all our media, and the adtech that exploits our data in perpetuity. All of which is also serving to spread propaganda, corrupt democratic processes, and cause the sociopolitical unrest we've seen in the last decade+. I hope that decades from now we can accept how insidious all of this is, and prosecute and…

Microtransactions are the perfect solution, if you have an economic theory that assumes near-zero transaction costs. Technology can achieve low technical costs, but the problem is the human cost of a transaction. The mental overhead of deciding whether I want to make a purchase to consume every piece of content, and whether I got ripped off, adds up, and makes microtransactions exhausting. When someone on the interne…

I would pay for YouTube premium in a heartbeat if they didn’t also include YouTube music, which I have zero interest in paying for.

Re: Cloudflare to introduce pay-per-crawl for AI bots

#283
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not cheaper than using one of the instant net settlement services like FedNow (UPI in India, PromptPay in Thailand, PayID in Australia)

Do you see what the issue might be with the parenthetical there?

Of course, but are you aware that there are already cross-country agreements that allow these systems to work, for example, UPI is accepted in Singapore?

https://support.google.com/pay/india/answer/13949170?hl=en

There are also alternatives like WePay, AliPay, LINE Pay and other wallet providers that are generally accepted across Asia.

The use of the Visa and MC networks is primarily a US/EU/APAC environment, where the alliance of bank issuers has controlled that market for decades.

This is essentially a "legacy" network, with a lot of issues related to the interchange and other fees, as well as any number of 3rd parties, hidden from the consumer, that "clip the ticket" of each transaction.

Re: Cloudflare to introduce pay-per-crawl for AI bots

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, bundling is the problem. That strategy created the fragmented landscape that we now see in streaming video, which is pretty much universally hated. The ideal solution would involve a flat rate which I pay monthly, and at the end of the month that money goes towards the content that I consumed during that month. If I only read a single blog, they get all of it. Then we build a culture around preferring to…

> I disagree, bundling is the problem. That strategy created the fragmented landscape that we now see in streaming video, which is pretty much universally hated. > The ideal solution would involve a flat rate which I pay monthly, and at the end of the month that money goes towards the content that I consumed during that month. If I only read a single blog, they get all of it. You just described bundling - that’s how…

Yeah, everything in the same bundle is what I'm going for. Except it's not a bundle that is offered and gatekept by some platform, but rather one that emerges from the participation of users while they interact with each other or with artists.

Whether I received the content via a browser, over bittorrent, or on a USB stick should have no bearing on whether I'm able to

- reward its creators

- assess the content's trustworthiness based on whether I trust those creators

Re: Cloudflare to introduce pay-per-crawl for AI bots

#285
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microtransactions are the perfect solution, if you have an economic theory that assumes near-zero transaction costs. Technology can achieve low technical costs, but the problem is the human cost of a transaction. The mental overhead of deciding whether I want to make a purchase to consume every piece of content, and whether I got ripped off, adds up, and makes microtransactions exhausting. When someone on the interne…

I would pay for YouTube premium in a heartbeat if they didn’t also include YouTube music, which I have zero interest in paying for.

The whole point of bundling is that you combine many things together because the marginal cost is zero. If you pay for YouTube premium, you are also paying for all of the videos on YouTube that don’t interest you. That’s irrelevant as long is there is enough content you want. The fact that the bundle includes a music app you don’t care to use is the same way, it doesn’t detract from the value proposition.

Re: Cloudflare to introduce pay-per-crawl for AI bots

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microtransactions are the perfect solution, if you have an economic theory that assumes near-zero transaction costs. Technology can achieve low technical costs, but the problem is the human cost of a transaction. The mental overhead of deciding whether I want to make a purchase to consume every piece of content, and whether I got ripped off, adds up, and makes microtransactions exhausting. When someone on the interne…

> the problem is the human cost of a transaction. The mental overhead of deciding whether I want to make a purchase to consume every piece of content […] > When someone on the internet tries to sell you something for a dollar, how often do you really take them up on it? It depends on how micro they are. Your example of $1 is quite big. It should be cents or even less. Several examples. When using chatgpt api, do you…

For the examples you gave, there is a lot of marginal cost to provide more of the product. ChatGPT and your utility would be bankrupt if they gave infinite usage. Although ChatGPT’s consumer product is flat rate (users greatly prefer that model), rumor is that they lose money if you use the big models a lot, and they do cap usage.

Re: Cloudflare to introduce pay-per-crawl for AI bots

#287
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would pay for YouTube premium in a heartbeat if they didn’t also include YouTube music, which I have zero interest in paying for.

The whole point of bundling is that you combine many things together because the marginal cost is zero. If you pay for YouTube premium, you are also paying for all of the videos on YouTube that don’t interest you. That’s irrelevant as long is there is enough content you want. The fact that the bundle includes a music app you don’t care to use is the same way, it doesn’t detract from the value proposition.

Well in my case the value is not there at their price which includes YouTube music as a separate service that must be maintained and I assume separate licensing as well. I’m not interested in paying for access to that side of the service. I have little doubt that the access to YouTube music adds to the sticker price of their bundle. They are not simply passing along bundled costs, they are also targeting what they think consumers are willing to pay. I think they’ve miscalculated in this case.

Re: Cloudflare to introduce pay-per-crawl for AI bots

#288
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like BAT isn't that wasteful, and without crypto you'd be stuck never getting paid by bad actors in the scheme.

But why exactly does it have to be on an append-only ledger where transactions are processed/validated for a fee? Why can’t it be a more conventional transaction processor like VISA on top of the banking system?

Bitcoin Lightning Network works and roughly maps to that.

Re: Cloudflare to introduce pay-per-crawl for AI bots

#289
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This should be the standard business model on the web, instead of the advertising middlemen that have corrupted all our media, and the adtech that exploits our data in perpetuity. All of which is also serving to spread propaganda, corrupt democratic processes, and cause the sociopolitical unrest we've seen in the last decade+. I hope that decades from now we can accept how insidious all of this is, and prosecute and…

Microtransactions are the perfect solution, if you have an economic theory that assumes near-zero transaction costs. Technology can achieve low technical costs, but the problem is the human cost of a transaction. The mental overhead of deciding whether I want to make a purchase to consume every piece of content, and whether I got ripped off, adds up, and makes microtransactions exhausting. When someone on the interne…

While I agree with most of your comment, there is a pitfall - bundling is often used as an extractive pricing strategy, where you force the consumers to buy goods they do not want to access the one they want.

This is problematic when the seller is a monopoly, and has a strong market power that prevents the consumer to seek alternatives.

https://www.concurrences.com/en/dictionary/bundling

Re: Cloudflare to introduce pay-per-crawl for AI bots

#290
post #20

This is basically just how we want to do micro payments. I think coinbase recently introduced a library for the same using cryptocurrency and the 402 status code. In fact yea it's called x402. https://github.com/coinbase/x402

This is a mistake by Cloudflare. They restrict data access for big players and it would hurt net neutrality as well. I am surprised this gets any positive feedback.
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