Comment by ShamelessC | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ShamelessC | Hacker News Reader

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See, that's the whole problem with the approach though.

Paywalls are shitty. Nobody wanted that to happen except for the money-men. It's for this very reason that if an article gets linked here and has a pay-wall, a few volunteers will go hunt down a free version of the article and post it on archive.org for everyone else to view. You may see this as flawed - but I see it as beautiful. The way the "good parts" of the web still work.

Money/currency/blockchain absolutely does _not_ have to be a fundamental structure of the internet. There is zero reason why a currency needs to be fundamental to the basic operation of "the web" other than for incumbents to try to increase the value of said currency. Like - seriously; the internet was supposed to be about democratization of information. I realize that didn't exactly happen due to big-tech extrapolating value out of everything - but the "solution" you are proposing is to say "oh you don't have any [insert coin here]? Yeah - you'll need to exchange 20$ USD first before you can even use our internet. Or if you don't have any cash we can give you some freebies so you can shill for us." Like - what? No. Not going to work.

Or maybe it will. But, not because it should.

So you'd rather choose privacy invading ads just because it's technically not a paywall? I'll take microtransactions every time. In fact, I'll argue that the current state of the internet can be directly attributed to content producer's inability to directly monetize their work so they have had to find an indirect way to get paid.

Information can be copied almost for free, but it still takes a fixed amount of work to produce even one copy of something. It is better to sell more copies at a fraction of the price assuming the revenue ends up the same because more value is created in the world. Unfortunately you can't charge people low enough amounts via the current financial system as they're not interested in innovation. So we are stuck with ads.

Those are decent points. I'll admit to some dormroom philosophizing in my original comment.

Moving on:

> So you'd rather choose privacy invading ads just because it's technically not a paywall? I'll take microtransactions every time.

Surely there is some middle ground there? I find _both_ ends of that spectrum deplorable. At least with the freemium model I can bring my own ad blocker. But no, I don't "choose privacy invading ads". I accept that the current internet has flaws. You understand that cryptocurrency is going to get co-opted by mainstream elites and the top 1% though, right? Sometimes I feel like I'm watching history repeat itself.

> the current state of the internet can be directly attributed to content producer's inability to directly monetize their work so they have had to find an indirect way to get paid.

I agree and I think the causation is actually reversed; the internet has enabled cheap copying of 0's and 1's since its inception. This has of course caused all sorts of issues and I agree that content creators should have a more direct way to monetize their work.

What I don't see is how NFT's enable that. Yes, they enable a content creator to collect currency from a one-time transaction, or perhaps a smart contract setup to provide a commission. But; the file contents are not actually encrypted anywhere. So ad-based websites can still easily steal content and profit from it. Further, even if they were; it would be ad-based networks buying the best content as they can afford to.

Oh, I'm ashamed to admit that I don't really know what NFTs are, but I was thinking of something along the lines of Patreon. I use it and like it, but it's still a third party that both sides need to sign up with so not everyone's on it and it's not available everywhere due to the limits imposed by traditional banking, among other things. A third party can still host the content and mediate access and charge fees for the service, but it should be working for the creator and not the other way around.

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