[EGreg]

This is exactly why we need micropayments on the web. Without correct solutions from the open source movement and the open Web, the State will end up doing stuff like this.

We have been building a community-to-publisher micropayment model. You can read about the economics of it here: https://qbix.com/QBUX/whitepaper.html#ECONOMICS

And furthermore, all these projects should start adopting the Web Monetization stardard, based on Interledger Protocol. Coil is a company started by Stefan Thomas (former CTO of Ripple) to effect micropayments on the Web. They teamed up with Mozilla to make this a standard. We are participating to implement it in all our open source community servers:

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/03/web-monetization-coil-and-...

[rootusrootus]

I don't think any normal person wants micropayments. It's a hassle, and if I have to pay for every thing I want to click on, I'm mostly not going to click anything at all. Even if it's just pennies. It is the epitome of 'getting nickled and dimed to death'.

I expect the future of the 'net is a collection of walled gardens, where you pay just once and get everything from news to music, movies, etc. Basically what Apple is trying to do now, among others. The independent news sources will have to negotiate contracts to be in these gardens, except for a few stand-out services that are so good people will pay for them directly.

[EGreg]

I don’t think you have read the link I sent.

We address that of course. Micropayments are supposed to be from communities to publishers, same as Netflix pays shows based on how many episodes or minutes are watched. You pay netflix and let them do the whole payout thing. They are an aggregator. Now decentralize that!

[rootusrootus]

Isn't that some version of what we already have, though? When I think micropayments I'm thinking of the consumer side. I thought there was consensus on that term, but I might be wrong. Would hardly be the first time :)