Micropayments have never worked well on the internet, not for technical problems, but likely more that the market isn't really there. I know I just want free stuff and I'm not going to pay to read a news article or blog post no matter how well written or researched.

So at the end of the day there is still no viable alternative to advertising supported content. Kill advertising and you'll take the content with it, because many of the content producers and curators won't waste their time for no return.

I don't like ads, but I like my free content, and ads are an acceptable way of financing it.

Edit: I get that some of you really don't like ads, but the quality of comments here is abysmal. You guys are living in some kind of dreamland if you think you can just kill of advertising and not lose something in the trade off (PS imagine a world with no Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.) I honestly expect more intelligent commentary from HN, consider both sides of your argument.

> Kill advertising and you'll take the content with it

Good. Let it die.

There's enough better content available for free and without ads. Somehow, it so happens that people who have something interesting or meaningful to say tend to say it anyway, and either pay for it themselves or ask nicely for something in return.

I honestly do believe the content quality is inversely proportional to the amount and obtrusiveness of ads on the page.

The problem is the "long-tail" of content.

Sure, Wikpedia will stick around post adblock, and so will big conglomerates (they can afford to put up paywalls, like WSJ and others).

Many content-farms will just stick to being a "review for hire" gig.

The problem is that the small shops will close down.

You know who else will stick around?

All the guys with cheap hosting accounts making web pages like the 1990's. Ironically they seem to be the only ones with content worth reading...

Yeah, I've hosted websites since I was a teenager. Ten bucks a month is pretty affordable for anyone employed. If the choice is between malicious advertisements funding professional content, or free content from amateurs, I pick the amateurs. Luckily, Patreon and pay walls (yes, I like pay walls) are providing us other options to retain the professionals as well.

> Kill advertising and you'll take the content with it, because many of the content producers and curators won't waste their time for no return.

Great! I'd personally love it if they went away. If it's good content, people have definitely shown to be willing to pay for it.

"essentially all of the ad supported sites I visit are diversions" - https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/web/AdSupportedWebD...

People have been shown to create good content for free too. I'm not convinced advertising is required.

You're both right in that people make good content for free and for pay websites, but you're dead wrong if you think advertising dollars is not also a motivation. You will lose good content.

Sure we will. But, IMO, it's quite worth it.

Gaming streamers on Twitch seem to get quite a bit of donations. Streamers are personalities that connect with their audience and have a following. Surprisingly, movies and music are now available through subscription services, after many years of sharing for free. These services are successful because they are polished, convenient and legal. People are paying a lot for ebooks, in-game items and other virtual goods.

So, no reason why other content couldn't make money.

Kill advertising and you'll take a lot of lame, average content with it. Or even desirable, culturally meaningful content that doesn't quite do enough. Sports news? Forget it, people may find their favourite vlog-commentator and pay for comedy, mash-ups and creativity. A decent article that makes you think for a bit? Not good enough, chances are they'll follow a popular author and his movement and put some money down for the cause they believe in.

(Ok that last thing is a bit scary but it's where things are going anyway...)

> People are paying a lot for ebooks, in-game items and other virtual goods.

Oh yes. Besides the small money drain Netflix and Spotify are, I've lost count on just how much money I spent buying e-books - legal, official e-books - just because of the convenience factor.

> A decent article that makes you think for a bit? Not good enough, chances are they'll follow a popular author and his movement and put some money down for the cause they believe in.

I rarely see such articles published in an ad-sponsored context anyway. An occasional mainstream journalism article, maybe. But as far as I can tell, most interesting/thought-provoking pieces now are being published by bloggers, which can successfully be funded by patronage, or even pay for hosting themselves (it's peanuts).

Hosting might cost peanuts, but literal peanuts cost money. How are those bloggers going to eat?

By having a day job, obviously.

It's actually better this way, because if your writing isn't directly tied to your income, you're not incentivized to write for exposure. This breeds higher quality.

I disagree. If you can't fund your content without ads then you have a bad business model. We should kill ads and any content that dies in the collateral is an acceptable loss.

Micropayments also don't work because no one has done it well, not because it's inherently not going to work.

I think micro-payments just don't sit well with people psychologically.

Even if you know the totals are going to be tiny, being on a meter just adds mental overhead to every click. And moreover most of the time people don't know if something is worth paying for until they've seen it, and they probably resent paying for some things.

This is true. What I find puzzling is that advertisements have most of the same issues but many people accept them. You could argue that people's acceptance of ads suggests they should accept micropayments, or people's rejection of micro payments suggests they should reject ads. But I put up with ads and haven't signed up for any micro payment schemes yet.

Maybe mini-payments would be better than micro-payments, so long as there's a good it-just-works technology for doing them that minimizes user interaction.

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The history of the web is littered with the corpses of tipping companies because almost no one wants to tip on the web.

Same for micropayments. No one wants to think about if they should pay for an article even if it is only 1c.

I think it is littered with the corpses of tipping companies because no one wants to jump through hoops to use a proprietary tipping service. But if you go with pay pal, you can get tips:

http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/11/how-to-make-...

maybey you could have a default .01$ for all sites that are using the micropayment platform (somthing like a discus plugin), and then the option to give more if you really like. so you don't actaully need to think about it most of the time

I still have to decide if I want to pay $0.01 just to visit a page. For every page I want to open I have to go through the mental process of "Is this page worth $0.01?". And it is that cost which is why micropayments like that always fail.

That actually can work:

http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/11/how-to-make-...

Then do it well and become a billionaire. I think many have tried and there's a fundamental problem with the idea if it never works. It's not just a matter of doing it well, you have to fix whatever everyone else has missed. I think the problem is the idea itself, it would explain why nobody gets it right.

>imagine a world with no Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc

I would love that world. Of the things you listed the only one I have an account with is Twitter, and who knows how long that'll last.

> I don't like ads, but I like my free content, and ads are an acceptable way of financing it

When looking at that tradeoff most people seem to agree with you (or don't care to think about it), and some people disagree with you.

A note: So if you just feel like you don't care to make this same choice, I'm not talking to you and am just using your comment as a jumping off point. But you seem to be defending the advertising status quo on HN, and if you are then I am talking to you.

I've never found "But if people start making these choices my business model stops working!" be a particularly defensible argument to make. This is maybe the single place online where it is least needed for me to make this point, right?

But apparently not, especially when it's the so-called disruptors who are making it. This is a potentially popular service to provide people at the moment, the ability to protect themselves from their online habits being used to build profiles of them, and it would destroy the incumbent business model (advertising supported content using click tracking). This sounds like classic disruption to me, doing something good for the consumer [1] while opening up a huge gap for a new and inventive business model to fill the gap.

As everyone is no doubt aware at this moment, there is no ethical argument to be made to save this "content" as a whole. The fact we call it "content" at all means no one really needs to say this do they? It is not saving journalism, that is still dying. I'd put better odds on the next business model that emerges saving investigative journalism, because corporate sponsorship was the stupidest idea for saving it possible anyway.

[1] If you think that using personal information built on surveillance in order to influence purchasing decisions is pro-consumer you are lying to yourself. It is effective and profitable. As is combining it with fake reviews and lifestyle marketing using shame and FOMO.

>So at the end of the day there is still no viable alternative to advertising supported content.

Yes there is. Many creators successfully support themselves entirely based on Patreon.

Patreon is not going to replace all of the advertising supported websites...

Good!

I for one think killing content is a good thing. The web is full of garbage and it would be great to rid of 90% of it. Content for the sake of content does not deserve to exist.

Absolutely! The web is FULL of garbage! I get humor out of these posts on HN, because it's pretty clear there's the group of people (myself included) that see advertising as a kind of assault on free will (which it is), and then there's the group of people who are obviously running some kind of content or business supported by advertising who are reeling at the thought of people out there that are so militant against the means through which their business survives. Reading the comments here that are pro-advertising to me have every marker of "You are calling my business a pile of shit".

I don't run a business, and my employer doesn't even do advertising on the web AFAIK. But I do use the web quite a lot, and I wouldn't want to see it all go away. Even this site is basically a giant ad for Y Combinator that features smaller ads for Y Combinator companies. All of the news sites I read are supported by ads. Most of the discussion forums I've used have been supported by ads. I don't value ads — I value the web that they support.

What if that 90% included 99% of the good content? When you make web sites almost universally unprofitable, you're not going to just kill "content for the sake of content." You're going to kill content indiscriminately, including content that relies on a paywall rather than ads for revenue, because sites like that need to be featured on other sites (i.e. run ads) to get visitors.

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen wrote a solid proposal for micropayments back in 2001. I don't think anyone has ever seriously tried to implement his idea, so until someone does try we won't know if it could work well.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/user-payments-predictions-f...

I think the fact that zero people, including Nielsen, have made a go of Nielsen's proposal in the fifteen years since speaks pretty strongly to its viability.

>Regarding #3, I'm personally 100% against any online advertising in any form.

What is your preferred method of paying people on the internet for their content? Do you think that micropayments would be a valid way to deal with this compensation gap?

Depends on the content. I like Patreon-style for YouTube, and that also occasionally fits with other things. I would also subscribe to a good source of news, though I haven't found one that qualifies as such yet.

Not the OP, but I prefer subscriptions. It's a direct exchange of money for value, and doesn't involve a creepy middleman whose incentive is to track you across the web.

I pay for the news that I read online by having subscribed to them also in paper form, or by paying taxes.

Most other services I use are paid via subscription fees, or are run ad-free by people as hobby projects.

Almost all the ad-supported services I use are monopolies anyway, have strict network lock-in effects, and shouldn't be in private hand anyway, instead they should be run by a cooperative, foundation, or government. (For example, web search, maps, phone books, etc).

This leaves us with a few ad-supported pages which likely couldn’t directly survive in this new environment, but which rely on content creators for their business anyway – such as YouTube.

For such cases, something like Flattr, but paid out by view, would be useful – something like the Datenträgerabgabe for the GEMA and VG Wort, but paid per month, not per empty CD bought.