7 ms·

A dream for some, a nightmare for others. People locked out from much of the Internet because they don't have enough money. Of course, the prices would usually

A dream for some, a nightmare for others. People locked out from much of the Internet because they don't have enough money. Of course, the prices would usually be set at whatever maximises revenue, just check out scientific journal publishing.

cedws 3mo ago
Conversely this has the potential to unlock the internet. How often have you clicked a paywalled link on HN and moved on because you don't want to go through the hassle and pay $20 to read an article? If you could be frictionlessly billed 10c to read the article instead, wouldn't you be more willing? I'm actually OK with paying a fair price for the content I consume, I just don't want to be paying hundreds of subscriptions for websites that I might only visit twice a year.
- incompatible 3mo ago
  Presumably, nobody would offer the 10c per page unless they were making more than the $20 / month or whatever previously. So people will be paying more. Then add all the sites that currently just get what they can with advertising, and now they can become pay-per-view.
  - skybrian 3mo ago
    They weren't getting the $20 / month from users who bounce off. Seems more likely that subscriptions, advertising, and microtransactions will coexist.
    - sanswork 3mo ago
      They have to get almost 200 more conversions to make up for the single subscriber. Given a lot of these services offer $1 entry subscriptions and people still bounce it's unlikely you'll have a mass market excited to pay $0.10 everytime they want to read an article to make up for the person paying $20 to read a handful everyday. Microtransactions have existed in a bunch of forms over the past 20 years and always fail to find take up because the mental load in deciding to pay or not is higher than the value receive. Maybe ideal for agents but how many people are going to trust their agents with enough of a balance.
      - thinkloop 3mo ago
        A $1 entry subscription where you have to type your name and credit card and submit and wait and now you have a relationship to manage, is infinitely more expensive than a 10 cent, automatic, non-recurring, one-time, no cancelation needed, pseudonomous, microtransaction.
        applfanboysbgon 3mo ago
        > pseudonomous Which isn't private. Wallet ID 123 buys a 10c article from Leftist Newspaper A and one from Leftist Newspaper B. Leftist Newspaper A and B, being businesses, sell the information that Wallet ID 123 purchased an article to Data Broker A. Data Broker A correlates all purchases Wallet ID 123 has ever made and with a high degree of accuracy identifies who they are and their political affliation. Data Broker A sells this profile to anyone who asks for it, including far right governments who might be interested in throwing people out of helicopters based on their political affiliation. Unless you use Monero, this will happen, and Monero will obviously not be used. Yes, 90% of people are careless and already give away this information right now. But you're suggesting closing the door on the rest who care to be able to protect themselves while still being able to use the internet, and cementing that nobody will ever have privacy for the rest of their lives, when we should be making an effort to make it harder to identify people, not easier.
        skybrian 3mo ago
        Perhaps some kind of mixer could be put in front of the micropayments system.
        Sankozi 3mo ago
        90% of people are careless and 9.9% are ignorant thinking they are safe. Microtransactional web is only a risk in an alternative universe which doesn't have spying/tracking/profiling funded by enormous ad industry. In our world it is a big improvement.
        applfanboysbgon 3mo ago
  - csomar 3mo ago
    The $20/month model is exclusionary as you are excluding people who are not interested in regularly reading a single newspaper. Pay-per-page is more reasonable. I have rarely paid for news subscription (partly because I find news here which comes from many sources). Obviously, I am not going to pay hundreds in subscriptions, so I am essentially paying $0. With this, I can see myself paying $20-30/month (less than my coffee spend). That's money that was previously unlocked. Also, being able to pay some random writer/journalist outside the mega-news-corps, has a special feel to it and this gives me the option to do that.
    - incompatible 3mo ago
      Random writer/journalists outside the mega-news-corps sometimes have a page for donations. You could donate to one once per month if you want to get rid of your $20-30.
      - Sankozi 3mo ago
        Or you could just read the news and pay automatically in the microtransactional world, without analysing which journalist should be supported.
  - Sankozi 3mo ago
    It will not be same price per page. I would gladly pay more than 1$ for a great article. Also 20$ monthly from 10 users for the whole site might be worse than 0.1$ from 100 users for a single article.
- mx7zysuj4xew 3mo ago
  Nope, not going to happen. Any per use micro transaction isn't going to work. If anything it's going to require a huge amount of workarounds to get the content for free via alternative means
- t-3 3mo ago
  Which payment processor will charge less than 10c per transaction?
  - acejam 3mo ago
    The idea is that a payment processor isn't involved at all
- fizzbuzzdizz 3mo ago
  “unlock the internet” by locking it up. yep that makes sense. ship it.
hightrix 3mo ago
I would argue a nightmare for most. Turning everything into a microtransaction / subscription is destroying what was good about the internet.
- skybrian 3mo ago
  Depends what you compare it to. If the alternative is buying a subscription to get past a paywall, it might be better?
  - yellow_postit 3mo ago
    Ads, especially personalized ads, are the alternative that powers much of the open internet. More options are great.
- jeremyjh 3mo ago
  Advertising and all the anti-patterns it incentivizes are worse.If the payments are very low and frictionless this could be very good for the internet - as long as Cloudflare is only the first and not the only.
  - fizzbuzzdizz 3mo ago
    in no world is advertising worse. 0. none. you’re utterly delusional as the people pushing this are thinking anyone is going to pay for their garbage content behind 10cent micro transactions
    - baby_souffle 3mo ago
      > no world is advertising worse. 0. none. you’re utterly delusional as the people pushing this are thinking anyone is going to pay for their garbage content behind 10cent micro transactions The current political situation we find ourselves in is partly due to the destruction of real journalism caused because people won’t pay for timely and accurate news. Advertising perverts incentives; I need you entertained - not informed - to make money…
hliyan 3mo ago
If the choice is between micro-transactions and ad-driven content (ads -> engagement maximization -> sensationalization + enshittification -> social and industrial decay), I'll take the former. Remember: from a business's perspective, advertising has positive ROI. Which means you as the consumer pay for it anyway. No ad supported service is free.
turtlebits 3mo ago
As the saying goes, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Servers cost money. Users pay for it with their privacy/data. Intrusive ads. Dark patterns. The increasing eyeballs on screen time is a net negative for society. I would say consuming content should come with some friction. My screentime would drastically decrease if even it was partial cents per video.

cedws 3mo ago

Conversely this has the potential to unlock the internet. How often have you clicked a paywalled link on HN and moved on because you don't want to go through the hassle and pay $20 to read an article? If you could be frictionlessly billed 10c to read the article instead, wouldn't you be more willing? I'm actually OK with paying a fair price for the content I consume, I just don't want to be paying hundreds of subscriptions for websites that I might only visit twice a year.

incompatible 3mo ago
Presumably, nobody would offer the 10c per page unless they were making more than the $20 / month or whatever previously. So people will be paying more. Then add all the sites that currently just get what they can with advertising, and now they can become pay-per-view.
- skybrian 3mo ago
  They weren't getting the $20 / month from users who bounce off. Seems more likely that subscriptions, advertising, and microtransactions will coexist.
  - sanswork 3mo ago
    They have to get almost 200 more conversions to make up for the single subscriber. Given a lot of these services offer $1 entry subscriptions and people still bounce it's unlikely you'll have a mass market excited to pay $0.10 everytime they want to read an article to make up for the person paying $20 to read a handful everyday. Microtransactions have existed in a bunch of forms over the past 20 years and always fail to find take up because the mental load in deciding to pay or not is higher than the value receive. Maybe ideal for agents but how many people are going to trust their agents with enough of a balance.
    - thinkloop 3mo ago
      A $1 entry subscription where you have to type your name and credit card and submit and wait and now you have a relationship to manage, is infinitely more expensive than a 10 cent, automatic, non-recurring, one-time, no cancelation needed, pseudonomous, microtransaction.
      - applfanboysbgon 3mo ago
        > pseudonomous Which isn't private. Wallet ID 123 buys a 10c article from Leftist Newspaper A and one from Leftist Newspaper B. Leftist Newspaper A and B, being businesses, sell the information that Wallet ID 123 purchased an article to Data Broker A. Data Broker A correlates all purchases Wallet ID 123 has ever made and with a high degree of accuracy identifies who they are and their political affliation. Data Broker A sells this profile to anyone who asks for it, including far right governments who might be interested in throwing people out of helicopters based on their political affiliation. Unless you use Monero, this will happen, and Monero will obviously not be used. Yes, 90% of people are careless and already give away this information right now. But you're suggesting closing the door on the rest who care to be able to protect themselves while still being able to use the internet, and cementing that nobody will ever have privacy for the rest of their lives, when we should be making an effort to make it harder to identify people, not easier.
        skybrian 3mo ago
        Perhaps some kind of mixer could be put in front of the micropayments system.
        Sankozi 3mo ago
        90% of people are careless and 9.9% are ignorant thinking they are safe. Microtransactional web is only a risk in an alternative universe which doesn't have spying/tracking/profiling funded by enormous ad industry. In our world it is a big improvement.
        applfanboysbgon 3mo ago
- csomar 3mo ago
  The $20/month model is exclusionary as you are excluding people who are not interested in regularly reading a single newspaper. Pay-per-page is more reasonable. I have rarely paid for news subscription (partly because I find news here which comes from many sources). Obviously, I am not going to pay hundreds in subscriptions, so I am essentially paying $0. With this, I can see myself paying $20-30/month (less than my coffee spend). That's money that was previously unlocked. Also, being able to pay some random writer/journalist outside the mega-news-corps, has a special feel to it and this gives me the option to do that.
  - incompatible 3mo ago
    Random writer/journalists outside the mega-news-corps sometimes have a page for donations. You could donate to one once per month if you want to get rid of your $20-30.
    - Sankozi 3mo ago
      Or you could just read the news and pay automatically in the microtransactional world, without analysing which journalist should be supported.
- Sankozi 3mo ago
  It will not be same price per page. I would gladly pay more than 1$ for a great article. Also 20$ monthly from 10 users for the whole site might be worse than 0.1$ from 100 users for a single article.
mx7zysuj4xew 3mo ago
Nope, not going to happen. Any per use micro transaction isn't going to work. If anything it's going to require a huge amount of workarounds to get the content for free via alternative means
t-3 3mo ago
Which payment processor will charge less than 10c per transaction?
- acejam 3mo ago
  The idea is that a payment processor isn't involved at all
fizzbuzzdizz 3mo ago
“unlock the internet” by locking it up. yep that makes sense. ship it.

hightrix 3mo ago

I would argue a nightmare for most. Turning everything into a microtransaction / subscription is destroying what was good about the internet.

skybrian 3mo ago
Depends what you compare it to. If the alternative is buying a subscription to get past a paywall, it might be better?
- yellow_postit 3mo ago
  Ads, especially personalized ads, are the alternative that powers much of the open internet. More options are great.
jeremyjh 3mo ago
Advertising and all the anti-patterns it incentivizes are worse.If the payments are very low and frictionless this could be very good for the internet - as long as Cloudflare is only the first and not the only.
- fizzbuzzdizz 3mo ago
  in no world is advertising worse. 0. none. you’re utterly delusional as the people pushing this are thinking anyone is going to pay for their garbage content behind 10cent micro transactions
  - baby_souffle 3mo ago
    > no world is advertising worse. 0. none. you’re utterly delusional as the people pushing this are thinking anyone is going to pay for their garbage content behind 10cent micro transactions The current political situation we find ourselves in is partly due to the destruction of real journalism caused because people won’t pay for timely and accurate news. Advertising perverts incentives; I need you entertained - not informed - to make money…

hliyan 3mo ago

If the choice is between micro-transactions and ad-driven content (ads -> engagement maximization -> sensationalization + enshittification -> social and industrial decay), I'll take the former. Remember: from a business's perspective, advertising has positive ROI. Which means you as the consumer pay for it anyway. No ad supported service is free.

turtlebits 3mo ago

As the saying goes, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Servers cost money. Users pay for it with their privacy/data. Intrusive ads. Dark patterns. The increasing eyeballs on screen time is a net negative for society. I would say consuming content should come with some friction. My screentime would drastically decrease if even it was partial cents per video.