this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2023
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I feel like that's where online payment systems really let us down. If there was an easy universal way to pay a few cents to view content and it wasn't a privacy and fee nightmare, I'm sure people would have no problem doing that. Digicash systems come to mind, I hope they could make a comeback one day.
But I also fear a lot of the damage could've been done already, kids who grow up with the internet now will probably only remember big tech platforms and may not be very eager to try out something more complicated.
I like your suggestion with easily payable small amounts. Because the way payment currently works is just not scale-able on an individual level. Sure, $20 per month for a technical news site would be worth it ... if that was the only news site you are consuming. But it isn't. I consume multiple tech news, local news, etc. I can't get back my full worth of spent money per site, because my time is split between multiple sites; and my time is finite.
I also can't just say "well, this month I consume only site A, next only site B, etc.", because that defeats how "news" work. In the end I skim headlines (or even sometimes content) and THEN it shows what is actually of interest and where I stay longer/dig deeper/actually read full.
In a perfect world we probably could have a "tip jar" at the end of every article that people throw in digital cash when the article was worth it. Unfortunately too many people would abuse it and simply not pay at all, so authors will have to ask for payment upfront ... but then I pay for something which I don't even know will be good. Maybe after seeing the full article (not yet reading it in detail) I realize it's not the kind of content I hoped for.
That thing was indeed easier with print media. You go to the store, flick through the magazine/paper and if you like it you pay for it and go read it.
I worked for a startup in the 90s, pre-enshittification, that wanted to empower micropayments on the web. Obviously, even when mostly "frictionless", users rejected the concept. Capitalism is going capitalize, but this is also the fault of users who demand "free".
This is in my opinion the crux of the matter. People want content for free: they won't pay for it directly and they won't watch ads (because they're often much too intrusive.) Of course the root problem is the economic system, but barring a near global revolution that's not going to change
Nowadays there is crypto, some of it is already perfect for micropayments. But it needs to be integrated into the browser/app to be truly frictionless, and there should be a "get your money back" option for the content that's click bait and not worth the asking price. Unfortunately the largest browsers are Chrome and Edge, by companies who aren't all that interesting in changing the way things are.
I am pretty convinced crypto as it currently is is 99% a scam or a way to waste a lot of money compared to a traditional financial transfer. It's made worse by the environmental impacts of mining. Crypto would have to be something completely different before it'll take off for any kind of traditional payment system. And I actually think we just need the government to mandate a better bank to bank payment system with no fees like they have in Europe. Anything else is too fragmented which means friction in use and higher fees converting between the competing systems.
You're not wrong, but not all crypto is the same. Some have switched to "proof of stake" which removes all the energy wasted on mining, some allow to write programs into it that can execute automatically to do some interesting things, and some allow sending fractions (thousandths, millionths) of a USD with barely a transaction fee.
Even in Europe, free bank-to-bank transfers take a couple days to execute (there is a paid option for instant transfers), and have a minimum of 0.01€ which might or might not be what you want to tip/pay someone for their content.
Not sure where in Europe you’re referring to but I’d be surprised if there’s anywhere in the EU where you can’t access free open banking transfers.