Comment by __MatrixMan__
11 days ago
I disagree, bundling is the problem. That strategy created the fragmented landscape that we now see in streaming video, which is pretty much universally hated.
The ideal solution would involve a flat rate which I pay monthly, and at the end of the month that money goes towards the content that I consumed during that month. If I only read a single blog, they get all of it.
Then we build a culture around preferring to share content which is configured to cite its sources, and we discourage sharing anything which has an obvious source with which it doesn't share its inbound microtransactions.
We already need to do our due dilligence re: determining if an information source is trustworthy (and if its sources are trustworthy, and so on). Might as well make money flow along the same structures.
It's not an ideal solution because any fixed cost solution is begging for a middle man/reseller to be introduced.
Like I pay the $5 monthly flat fee (or $500, $5k, $500k, whatever it's known fixed cost for me) for the system, turn around and resell all content for a $1 monthly flat fee.
There is a real cost to the content you're consuming with that flat-fee. So either the flat fee is more of "credit" system or it's relying on a middle man to do the oversubscribing calculation/arbitrage or whatever to balance the cost.
And no, introducing any form of rate limits or "abuse reduction" doesn't work because it's basically changing your flat-fee into a credit based system.
A credit system has advantages over pure micropayment system (in terms of mental overload. I know I charged my "internet content" card with $50 for this month. A movie on Netflix is selling for $2 tonight. Normally it's $0.5 a movie, but it's Valentines and everyone is "Netflix and Chilling" so surge charging)
I suppose "credit system" is indeed more accurate than "fee", it's just that I personally would set it at a flat rate and then stop thinking about it, so it would feel like a sort of admission-to-the-internet to me.
As for bandwidth and storage costs... that could just be rolled into the same attribution/payment scheme. If content is not propagating well because too few people are hosting it, then I'm ok with allocating some space and bandwidth to help distribute it. I don't think there's anything wrong with that so long as when it gets viewed, the creators still get the bulk of the credit and I only get a teensy bit for the part I played in distributing it.
The goal would be to mostly decouple the attribution/payment handling from the data handling so that it's as simple as seeding a torrent and it's the players/clients/whatever that handles giving credit. If I notice that I've got a leacher problem (whether as a creator or as a distributor) then maybe I revoke trust in the leachers and they stop getting the content from me.
A flat fee payment structure is very very, very, different from a credit based system. You might as well be conflating it with the current system. That's how very different flat fee vs credit system are.
> It's just that I personally would set it at a flat rate and then stop thinking about it, so it would feel like a sort of admission-to-the-internet to me.
That doesn't matter. A credit system is like an hourly changing flat fee. it doesn't make sense. You might set it at $10 a month, that's it for you. But where is that number coming from. What if you watch a "Just released" movie that costs $10 credits on the first day of the month. No internet for you for the rest of the month? You used to read 10 articles every month, but now $10 you can only read 2. Is that ok? it's a flat fee after all.
> If I notice that I've got a leacher problem (whether as a creator or as a distributor) then maybe I revoke trust in the leachers and they stop getting the content from me.
In other words: "If I notice a bad actor, I block them" congratulations, you have solved all of the internet problems. That idea could be worth billions. Personally I just don't write bugs to begin with and therefore bad actors can't exploit them.
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I think the costs of serving digital content are so low that you don’t need to rely on oversubscription. The user can stream 24/7 and you would still make money (assuming you got the working IP payment model like YouTube does that divide up individual user revenue proportional to that user’s watch time - I think Spotify has a problem here). The only “anti abuse” you need is to enforce that the user only streams one thing at a time.
The problem with the credit system is that the user won’t like that they have to pay extra for the good stuff, the feeling of watching worse stuff to save money etc.
Given the marginal cost of distributing the good stuff is the same as the bad stuff, why make the customer feel bad about watching by adding an incremental cost? Just let it rip. If you have a lot of good stuff, customers will be willing to pay more for the bundle. Once they’re in the bundle, let them watch exactly what they want.
The "cost" I was referring to is the cost to produce the content you are paying for. Not the cost to distribute it. Of course the cost to distribute it digitally is negligible (hell, lets assume it's $0), but the cost to produce it isn't even remotely close to that.
> The only “anti abuse” you need is to enforce that the user only streams one thing at a time.
We're talking about a flat fee you pay that gives you "access to content on the internet".
Oh yeah? How does one "stream" an article? Does playing a video at 2x make it 1/2 price? what about 1000x?
Ok, ok, Lets steelman this argument and assume we come up with resonable common sense answers to all these questions. "an article counts as x minutes". "limit playback to max of 2x and figure out some reasnonable formula to pay the creator", etc
Congratulations, you've invited a credit system with extra steps. The "flat fee" is actually the fee for (602430) * 2 minutes a month. One could "Donate Minutes" left on their account at the end of the month to their favorite creator. well, instead of trading them to your favorite creator, why don't you trade them in for $$
> Given the marginal cost of distributing the good stuff is the same as the bad stuff, why make the customer feel bad about watching by adding an incremental cost? Just let it rip. If you have a lot of good stuff, customers will be willing to pay more for the bundle. Once they’re in the bundle, let them watch exactly what they want.
The model works for YouTube because of the centralized nature of YouTube. I think that model can work for other centralized systems too like cloudflare.
Hell, maybe that was cloudflare endgame all along. If a good chunk of the internet is running behind cloudflare proxies, then cloudflare could do brave's BAT idea but actually sanely with like a normal payment and subscription etc.
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So, Flattr 2.0 ?
https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/flattr2.html
More or less, yeah.
When it's all grown up though, I'd hope for more transparency into where the money is going. Suppose a journalist has risked life and limb to expose some important information and two news outlets publish stories about it. I don't want to pay the news outlets under the assumption that they'll then pay the journalist. Instead I want to decide which story to read based on whichever one triggers my client to compensate the journalist the most (because I care more about the investigative work than the writing, though other users might configure their clients differently).
> I disagree, bundling is the problem. That strategy created the fragmented landscape that we now see in streaming video, which is pretty much universally hated.
> The ideal solution would involve a flat rate which I pay monthly, and at the end of the month that money goes towards the content that I consumed during that month. If I only read a single blog, they get all of it.
You just described bundling - that’s how YouTube Premium works. I’m not sure what the distinction you are drawing is here. Is it the existence of multiple separate bundling services? If so, I agree that creates friction, but the solution is more bundling, ie. everything should be in the same bundle.
Btw I don’t hate the fragmentation of streaming that much. The value proposition for TV/movie consumption is the best it’s ever been. For what it used to cost to buy a single season of a TV show on DVD, I now get access to watch hundreds of shows on-demand. It would be even better if all the streaming services merged together, but antitrust law will probably prevent that.
I think what most people hate more is when the specific thing they want isn’t in the bundle - ie. paying $4 to watch one movie.
Yeah, everything in the same bundle is what I'm going for. Except it's not a bundle that is offered and gatekept by some platform, but rather one that emerges from the participation of users while they interact with each other or with artists.
Whether I received the content via a browser, over bittorrent, or on a USB stick should have no bearing on whether I'm able to
- reward its creators
- assess the content's trustworthiness based on whether I trust those creators
I want to have single subscription and then happy to pay extra $5 to watch an out of network show.
I feel streaming companies should offer some sort of content exchange for a fee so users wouldn’t have to switch platforms.