"Is the content worth paying for?" feels like the wrong metric wrt. tipping.

I think a more accurate question is "Does the content make me want to support the creator?"

This is why tipping thrives in settings like Twitch, which is heavily geared around engendering parasocial relationships.

I don't follow... If the content isn't good enough to pay for, why would you want to support its creator?

It’s not that I’m too selfish to give someone a dollar for content that I liked, it’s that I’m too lazy

I don't like the music my friend makes, but I'll support him by buying his album and sharing it with others who might like it more.

What does it mean for content to be truly worth paying for? That someone pays, voluntarily, after already having consumed the content? How could we distinguish selfishness from content not worth paying for?

Perhaps “truly worth paying for” is setting too high a bar for some kinds of content that people do find useful?

I think its also just really hard for people to quantify on a small scale. Its much easier to reason about whether or not you get, on average, $25 a month worth of value from a subscription to the New York Times than it is to try and guess whether someone's review of a vacuum you're considering is worth $2 to you or $0.37 or anything in between.

Or if the stakes are even lower and you're not avoiding a lemon of a vacuum, you're getting marginal improvement to an experience - what is it worth to read someone saying "don't go to Jim's Ale House when on vacation there, its fine but Jacks' is nearby and better"? Clearly that information has some value, but... how much? Whats the cost of a tip that helps turn a serviceable meal on a vacation into a better one?

It's also subjective down to the individual, so how would you even quantify it properly?

A good with a massive supply and a relatively small demand is therefore worth little. It's a great thing that we've succeeded in producing an enormous amount of information, and art/entertainment...but it's all well past post-scarcity.

> It is not that people are too selfish, but that there is not much content truly worth paying for.

That's two ways of saying the same thing.

But people are (at a much greater rate) willing to pay with ads.

> But people are (at a much greater rate) willing to pay with ads.

Not really. Most people just don't know how to block them, and browsers won't block them by default because of they have a conflict of interest.

The second one is the larger issue. Patreon is working well for many things but still not easy or integrated enough.

Even acknowledging the state of crypto today the dev and payment experience of Metamask as a browser extension beats any conventional payment system I've encountered. What's needed is Metamask but not necessarily crypto.

>It is not that people are too selfish, but that there is not much content truly worth paying for.

Go spend some time on /r/Youtube. If there is any content worth paying for on this internet, it's the virtually limitless reservoir of incredible content across youtube, and for a relatively low fee you can make ads disappear. But the anti-Google sentiment is so strong that the selfish freeloaders will do anything in their power to both not pay and not accept ads.

Youtube Premium subscriber here. It's my favorite "streaming" service that I pay for. I'd cancel Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, Paramount+, etc.. long before I ever canceled YT Premium.

With that being said, I don't think your comment is fair. The anti-Google sentiment is justified. They violate your privacy. Not wanting to support them by signing up for their paid service isn't being a "selfish freeloader".

I use Invidious and take any money I’d have put into Google and put it into supporting my favorite creators, my preferred instance, and FreeTube.

I’m more than happy to “freeload” off of a multi-billion dollar ad company and support creators in a more meaningful way. And I fully support anyone who wishes to avoid the evil that is ads, even if they don’t support their creators directly otherwise. There is nothing selfish about wanting to conserve time, it’s the only currency that actually matters.