[acquisitionsilk]

I'm not saying I want them to run the whole service free of charge, I'm saying I'd consider it a gain for the species if the business closed down. I look forward to alternative ideas (with e.g. no middlemen, and direct payment) being tested out.

The TV era held some promise but steadily declined, and the Youtube era has went similarly. The audiovisual onslaught continues. Technically competent people on here are innoculated against the realities of the average usage on these platforms, which equates to brain-rot of the lowest calibre.

[bdangubic]

with e.g. no middlemen, and direct payment

this sounds amazing but it can’t be done. no one is going to 79 websites to watch things from 79 different artist. the middleman are core evil part not just in this area but many others but I can’t see how this kind of society we have built can function without it

[acquisitionsilk]

It wouldn't have to be 79 websites, obviously - there's RSS, for example. But there's also ten other things that already exist, and probably ten other things that don't exist that neither of us could imagine.

I know that if you live in one place, in one time, and everyone does one thing around you and acts like it's the only thing that ever existed, that it's really (really, really) tempting to think it's the only thing that could exist. But it's completely false. Loads of obvious seeming things are totally false, and this is definitively one of them.

Not only is it possible that we'll have a totally different society one day, and maybe even one where we have no to extremely few middlemen, but since Pascal and de Fermat we've known it to be roughly 100% likely! You can completely depend on the fact it will happen!