[buboard]

> a lot of that "web content" needs to realize the actual value of their content might be ~$0

If people are spending time on your site, you are providing value to them (excluding scams, of course). It's never 0.

> Advertising distorted the market; a lot of people were abl

It did not. The percentage of GDP that companies spend in advertising is historically the same for more than 100 years. What happened with the internet is that Google and later FB progressively sucked up ALL the profits, leaving literally scraps to publishers. And over time they are eating more and more value from publishers because all their competitors have vanished (there is currently NO competitor to adsense). Publishers are seing their ad CPMs being lower , despite the fact that online audiences are growing fast, and the shift to online ads has accelerated explosively in the past few years.

Patreon and subscriptions have their place, but they are not scalable. Users will revolt if they have to pay 30 yearly subscriptions for reading 30 articles , and are forced to pass from an spanish inquisition to unsubscribe. Subscriptions can also be bad for the quality of content: If creators try to appeal to their patrons/subscribers instead of trying to reach as wide audiences as possible, they tend to become more partisan and biased ; you get what you incentivize.

micropayments would indeed be far better especially if they were anonymous, fire-and-forget payments. crypto payments would be ideal for that but its not gonna happen because they are untaxable