V interesting. They're not wrong. There's definitely a tension here, people want to be paid for their work so the good guys build lists they can monetize. It's such a mess.
I used Brave back in the day when it was beta, maybe I need to dig back in. Personally I'm loving how Readup fills this gap for me, I can skip a lot of paywalls and put my money with folks whose work I appreciate.
It's amusing to me how the big idealistic utopian internet vision fell apart, thanks marketers! (said as a former marketing demon myself). It's the hazards of a "free" and "open" internet that is truly none of those things. Honestly I would pay a hefty subscription for a browser that just wiped all these ads, tracking, and other BS off the map.
For more amusement, you really have to read Douglas Adam's 1995 vision on the future of magazines, scouted by our dear @deephdave. I just commented on it.
It's the hazards of a "free" and "open" internet that is truly none of those things.
What do you mean? That being free & open predetermined the internet to become not free & open eventually?
for the free & open I mean the early utopian days when the internet was supposed to be this example of that sort of life. Some of the "this will be the great democratizer of the universe" ethos, which it has done in some small ways. A very idealistic image of what open, free internet would be—and yes, oversimplified.
Today I would argue the net doesn't represent that utopian vision. It's very gatekeeped, whether thats search rankings from the big search providers, or no access without ads. Sure it’s “free” in a sense to access, but we pay in other ways…whether with our attention or our data. It always cost to host a website etc, but the free, open exchange of ideas isn't really the end result in the odern day.
I don't think that the idealistic free/open was ever truly possible, it's just interesting to see how it's changed and found its way to funded. Money will change hands, someone has to pay for the net to exist
not sure that riff explains it, but hopefully that starts it
Crypto can easily solve the micropayment issue. I was surprised that this wasn’t explicitly mentioned especially as Brave (which he did mention) is crypto based.
Everyone wants to be the one subscription people choose to pay for. People simply don’t want to pay for multiple music or video streaming services, and they don’t want to pay for multiple news sources. Zero-sum economics require every other player to fail for one to succeed.
The music streaming comparison is one we've often been drawn to. But there is at least this important difference: music streaming services have achieved incredible coverage. There’s good chance that you just need one music streaming service for all your needs. And there can co-exist various players in the industry, as happens now. They differentiate on pricing/features/ecosystem/…
There have been various bundling attempts in news or written media, but non of them are as ambitious or successful as Spotify was when it launched music streaming afaik. Not even Apple News.
Creating the missing article payment infrastructure for the web is one goal of Readup.
Re: Scroll. Twitter acquired Scroll and integrated it into Twitter Blue recently. But I believe it has only made premium articles available via Twitter I believe, which is a very sub-optimal "free” news environment. Thereby they axed the loved Scroll feature of just going to the publisher’s sites directly. I might be wrong here.
V interesting. They're not wrong. There's definitely a tension here, people want to be paid for their work so the good guys build lists they can monetize. It's such a mess.
I used Brave back in the day when it was beta, maybe I need to dig back in. Personally I'm loving how Readup fills this gap for me, I can skip a lot of paywalls and put my money with folks whose work I appreciate.
It's amusing to me how the big idealistic utopian internet vision fell apart, thanks marketers! (said as a former marketing demon myself). It's the hazards of a "free" and "open" internet that is truly none of those things. Honestly I would pay a hefty subscription for a browser that just wiped all these ads, tracking, and other BS off the map.
For more amusement, you really have to read Douglas Adam's 1995 vision on the future of magazines, scouted by our dear @deephdave. I just commented on it.
What do you mean? That being free & open predetermined the internet to become not free & open eventually?
Btw: awww, lots of love back from Readup!
for the free & open I mean the early utopian days when the internet was supposed to be this example of that sort of life. Some of the "this will be the great democratizer of the universe" ethos, which it has done in some small ways. A very idealistic image of what open, free internet would be—and yes, oversimplified.
Today I would argue the net doesn't represent that utopian vision. It's very gatekeeped, whether thats search rankings from the big search providers, or no access without ads. Sure it’s “free” in a sense to access, but we pay in other ways…whether with our attention or our data. It always cost to host a website etc, but the free, open exchange of ideas isn't really the end result in the odern day.
I don't think that the idealistic free/open was ever truly possible, it's just interesting to see how it's changed and found its way to funded. Money will change hands, someone has to pay for the net to exist
not sure that riff explains it, but hopefully that starts it
Crypto can easily solve the micropayment issue. I was surprised that this wasn’t explicitly mentioned especially as Brave (which he did mention) is crypto based.
Daniel could've invented Readup! Preach.
The music streaming comparison is one we've often been drawn to. But there is at least this important difference: music streaming services have achieved incredible coverage. There’s good chance that you just need one music streaming service for all your needs. And there can co-exist various players in the industry, as happens now. They differentiate on pricing/features/ecosystem/…
There have been various bundling attempts in news or written media, but non of them are as ambitious or successful as Spotify was when it launched music streaming afaik. Not even Apple News.
Creating the missing article payment infrastructure for the web is one goal of Readup.
Re: Scroll. Twitter acquired Scroll and integrated it into Twitter Blue recently. But I believe it has only made premium articles available via Twitter I believe, which is a very sub-optimal "free” news environment. Thereby they axed the loved Scroll feature of just going to the publisher’s sites directly. I might be wrong here.