[NH_2]

> It's not that your article isn't worth a nickel, it's that it's not worth my mental energy to debate whether to spend a nickel.

I agree with the above, but disagree that this makes micropayments for online content a futile venture. There are a couple ways that come to mind to solve the mental fatigue issue:

1. Automate all the payments

2. Automate all the payments w/ a cap

3. Automate payments from whitelisted domains

4. Don't automate payments, but ask to whitelist new domains (similar to: "remember me").

These could all just be user preferences, just as described in the post.

[hapless]

I think proposition #2, ala flattr, is the only viable one out of this lot.

The other three all fall on the sword of "should I pay $0.05 for this mouse click?". If the user ever has to ask himself that question, the game is up.

[pjc50]

TBH, the entities that should be paying sites are the link aggregators like HN, Reddit, and especially Facebook. Reddit lets you give "gold" to individual users if you like what they've said; I wonder what would happen if they allowed the handing out of gold to sites linked from Reddit?

[digi_owl]

I dunno how real the story is, but this bring to mind the exchange between Disney and Microsoft over who should be paying the other. Either Disney for using MS video formats, or MS for using Disney content.

The whole thing basically heads face first into net neutrality territory.

That said, back during for pay phone services the service got paid by the telco, and then the telco added the cost to the callers bill.

So should perhaps my ISP bill me for my Netflix viewing, rather than me paying Netflix directly?

[manigandham]

Why would link aggregators be paying? Who pays them then?

[NH_2]

Agreed. I'm actually starting a link aggregator (http://www.filter.news) and would love to implement this in the future. Besides supporting quality journalism, I think the signaling could be important as well.

[s73v3r]

Automated payments are that great of an idea, because then I have no idea how much I'm actually spending. And you're crazy if you think most people will go in and look at their itemized "content bill" unless they find a huge charge on their credit card.