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Comment by herodotus | Hacker News Reader

> That says your actual product is worth fuck all.

Look I use ad blockers and a pi-hole. And I don't bother reading paywalled sites that I don't pay for. But your comment is a little harsh. It is a sad reality of the internet that there are so few options for generating revenue. I wish there was a micro-payment model where part of my monthly ISP payment was divvied up and paid to websites based on volume of content read by me. That way niche websites (like, for example, hobby sites or local sites) could get some income without having to resort to ads or fundraising. In my view the real ripoff are the exorbitant monthly fees I pay to my ISP.

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The fact that even in Silicon Valley, the Comcast monopoly is very strong for both single-family and multi-tenant housing tells you everything you need to know about the viability of anyone actually solving this problem. They’re simply making far too much profit from bad service and terrible business practices, and they’ve paid for all the regulators they need to ensure they’ll never have to change or have any meaningful competition. That they and others in the ISP and mobile ISP cartel have been handed hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to build out FTTH and rural areas that they instead pocketed is just the cherry on top of the turd banana split that is consumer protection in the USA. Check out “The Book of Broken Promises: $400 Billion Broadband Scandal” for more on this.

It's brutal but true. Either have a revenue model or expect no income. That is the reality. The fuzzy grey bit in the middle is where all the garbage is.

Your idea sounds a fantastic way to make a system incredibly complicated with no actual gain other than a billing dystopia.

> I wish there was a micro-payment model where part of my monthly ISP payment was divvied up and paid to websites based on volume of content read by me.

something like that already exists: https://www.contentpass.net/en

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