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Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

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Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#401

Post by hathawsh »

TylerE wrote: post #295
hathawsh wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please help me understand better, because it feels like part of the problem has already been solved. Specifically, I've been told that the independent journalists that I watch on YouTube Premium receive a portion of my subscription fee. Is that not a form of micropayments? The system seems to work well enough for videos. Isn't there some way to adapt that kind of system to other media?

No, that is absolutely 100% not micropayments, as the consumer is not paying per view/article/video whatever. They're paying a fixed fee and are not metered.

Good to know. Now I think I know why micropayments for news media never took off: because people who want to read news media probably don't want to waste mental cycles on keeping track of a micropayments account. They want a set-and-forget solution with a predictable cost. If micropayments can't fit those expectations, then the market probably wants something other than the thing we're calling micropayments.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#402

Post by PaulRobinson »

munificent wrote: post #234

Let's say a journalist writes an excellent article about something political of serious import. I'm fine with paying for that article to get access to it. But, really, the article is a lot more useful to me if other people can access it too. Since everyone can vote, I want the whole populace to be informed, even poor people. I wonder if there is a viable business model where for each article, readers can pay to unloc…

I've thought about doing this with software:

"I will write X. Once I have sold $Y worth of licenses, I'll open source it".

Every purchaser is contributing towards the future state of it being open sourced. It balances the needs of developers to need to live and pay bills vs most us wanting to get our code out there. It breaks the monthly recurring revenue model most customers hate. It incentivises early adopters to "invest" by getting early access, but means uncertain just have to wait.

Doing this with articles, books, music, whatever - all sounds pretty cool to be honest. It requires creators to radically transform their human need to maximise revenue from "hits" though.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#403

Post by KellyCriterion »

ouhamouch wrote: post #375
KellyCriterion wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my country there are some newspaper/magazines/etc. which are prohibiting Archive.IS/PH very very good because of their detection - at some this is working.

Don't forget to donate your $1 access token to the archive; you might be the first and only compatriot to do so.

Cool idea! Didnt know this is possible!

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#404

Post by littlecranky67 »

sanswork wrote: post #390
littlecranky67 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not black/white. It is okay to have the freedom to become self-custodial anytime, but not everybody needs to transact in self-custody all the time. Taproot was another major step that enables lightning upgrades in future versions (such as zero-fee channel opens) that is barely discussed. The number of X years for onboarding Y amount of people is not accurate, as it disregards all major developments of the last…

You need enough users for providers to bother making it an option to pay with so it really is black and white. You might get a few niche providers offering it as a payment method without a critical mass of users but most companies aren't going to invest time and effort into implementing a payment system a tiny percentage of users have access too and if I need to trade money with my friends the low % means that in the…

All you are saying is a chicken and egg problem of adoption - nothing todo with the technology itself. Adoption IS growing, so we will see.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#405

Post by fmajid »

beeflet wrote: post #284
fmajid wrote: post #45

I have a patent on micropayments for the Web from 1996. 30 years later, the situation hasn't changed and Clay Shirky or Andrew Odlyzko's arguments around the mental cost of microtransactions remain valid. Besides subscriptions to individual publications, the only model that would work is a Spotify-like subscription for a bundle of sites, with the revenue shared according to page views (or better, some metric that doe…

what's the patent?

https://blog.majid.info/pdf/patent_ppv.pdf

(in French, however)

It's a micropayment proxy using network authentication, billing on your ISP bill, with a reload grace period to prevent double-billing. It was deployed by France Telecom in its Wanadoo retail Internet service, but most of the money they made was from selling ringtones, not the original purpose of migrating Minitel service providers to the Web.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#406

Post by satvikpendem »

derektank wrote: post #306
chongli wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there is a viable business model where for each article, readers can pay to unlock it not just for themselves, but for everyone. The price would obviously have to be higher since you aren't just buying it for yourself. But perhaps the sense of "I'm helping build a better-informed world and helping broadcast my values" would encourage people to pay that higher price. What you're asking for is the system we…

>Many of the most mundane decisions made in municipal councils go completely unnoticed yet they can destroy whole communities in the long run. They go unnoticed because of scaling issues, not because people are per se less interested in local politics than national politics. If you write a story about a decision on the local city council, it is of interest to maybe a few hundred thousand, whereas a story about Congre…

> not because people are per se less interested in local politics than national politics

Actually I believe this is exactly the issue. Most people are interested more in national politics than county or even state politics. Of the people I know who vote in national elections, very few vote in local ones or even go to city council meetings.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#407

Post by Bratmon »

Zaskoda wrote: post #115
Bratmon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? What does adding a slow database to the process help?

This sounds like a reflexive "I hate blockchain and cryptocurrency" reaction but I'll give a reply regardless. You can't do transactions with just a database. You'd have to add a payment processor. Now things are getting wildly complex. x402 is designed with agentic AIs in mind. AIs make mistakes. Having an immutable record that can't be tampered with is a nice layer of security. And while I haven't worked with it pe…

But won't this solution still need:

1. A payment processor for users to turn money into tokens 2. A payment processor for news sites to turn tokens into money 3. A software provider to handle the actual microtransaction part of this (unless they want to learn how to become software developers themselves)?

It seems to me like all the blockchain does here is to make it so this transaction needs 3 software providers instead of just one!

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#408

Post by claytongulick »

ummonk wrote: post #400
claytongulick wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The statement you quoted was about Big Tech oligarchs, not media bias. You need to work on your reading comprehension.

Did it make you feel uncomfortable to have your bias pointed out to you?

Is that why you made the inflammatory statement "you need to work on your reading comprehension?"

Granted, I probably wouldn't have felt great if someone had said "bullshit" had worked on me.

Especially if it was true.

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