[bitwarrior]

Micropayments is something that I think the internet as a whole needs. However, I don't think the mental model people usually have isn't quite "micro" and frictionless enough.

Imagine a world where your web browser essentially contains and controls your wallet. You pre-pay into that wallet, say, $20. I imagine we'll probably also refer to that as "credits" so internationalization isn't so tough. So let's pretend we have 2000 credits. Now, let's start browsing the internet.

You start by conducting a web search. Perhaps there is a mechanism in HTML and the browser that basically say, "Clicking this will cost 1c". We'd probably develop a shorthand, some icon and beside it, it says the price in credits. Imagine a button like [(1c) Search].

Immediately, what is the benefit? The search engine works for you. It's like Kagi in that regard, but you didn't need to set up an account and give them your credit card information. YOU are the customer. There are no ads, they need to compete to make the search results the best, otherwise you're going somewhere else. You're no longer the product.

You see a news article in your search result. Fantastic. You visit the news website - there isn't an ad in sight. Pure news. The article starts with a title, a few lines, perhaps the first paragraph, and to read more, you click that [2c Read the Article] button. You click it, and boom, you see the entire article. No subscriptions, no popups, no ads. You are the customer. The news site wants you to be happy, not advertisers. You.

The news article discusses a new open source project that is really taking off. Cool! You click the link. Looks pretty neat! You download it, toy with it, and find that it's actually pretty useful! You go back to their repo site, and there's a little tip option. Easy peasy. You tip them 100 credits. No signing up for an account at some other site, no entering your credit card, just done and done.

I like the idea of micropayments because it makes the user the customer again. The internet has become incredibly hostile to users since we are, by and large, the product rather than the customer. We need to flip the incentive model. Does it suck to pay for things on the internet? A little. But I'd rather that and get a great experience (and also allow news organizations to have a working business model, etc) than what we have now.

[matheusmoreira]

Taxes and AML/KYC kill this. People need to surveil their customers in order to comply with legal requirements. As soon as money is involved there's so much bureaucracy people just contract it out to intermediaries like Stripe and by then payments are anything but micro.

[beeflet]

The real innovation of cryptocurrency is that it allows people to think outside the box of AML/KYC.

Stablecoins, which not decentralized at all (and thus defeat the entire purpose of cryptopcurrency) are allowed to break the rules by wearing the label of "cryptocurrency", with the implication being that cryptocurrencies are just going to break the rules anyways.

[mmooss]

Isn't the Brave web browser based on this idea, using cryptocurrency?

[__MatrixMan__]

Yeah, BAT was supposed to be exactly this, you'd mine it by browsing and tolerating non targeted ads from your browser and you'd pay it to content creators in lieu of tolerating their targeted ads.

It was a great idea, but I get the feeling that it stalled somewhere along the way.

[servo_sausage]

If I'm publishing something, I want maximum revenue.

If I can guarantee repeat customers then I can make the reader the sole focus, but if I still have to maximise based on capricious trends and search indexing, then I'll probably maximse the payment, the adds, and sell your data as well.

Subscription services are probably the only way, unless we see a consolidation of hosts with a consistent brand and quality, enough to trust a micro transaction will get something of the quality I expect.