
Paywalls coming to medium.com: “We're building monetisation” - pmlnr
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35709680
======
jjoe
The HN title is sensationalist considering the length of the article and other
points of discussion. The full quote is:

 _" I also think there's a lot of potential for premium or subscription or
even user-paid content. Some sort of paywall or membership."_

It's unfair IMO.

~~~
pmlnr
> title is sensationalist

Yep, on purpose. The original title is misleading as well, presenting medium
from a false view.

~~~
dang
> _Yep, on purpose_

That's an abuse of HN. We take submission privileges away from accounts that
do this, so please don't do it again.

The site guidelines ask you to change the original title when it is misleading
or linkbait, but not by turning it into a sensational opinion piece. Cherry-
picking a single detail at the expense of all the others is editorializing.
Moreover your title went way beyond what that detail in the article justifies.
All of this is what the HN guidelines try to prevent.

I'm not sure I agree that the original title was misleading, but even if it
was, the replacement must be accurate and neutral, preferably using
representative language from the article. If you have a tendentious point to
make, you need to make it via a comment in the thread, on a level playing
field with every other user.

------
fgandiya
Honestly, I think the submission title doesn't do the article much justice.
While it does mention their intention to monetize, it talks about other tings
to.

I mean, maybe I don't use it much, but it seems to do a really good job of
filtering spam and I don't see much harassment. But it's hard to see opposing
views unless you look hard enough for posts which are usually shut down by
others. Also, the comments have to be approved by the author which does lead
to echo chambers, but they seem to know this since their lawyer Ferrest said
that "You shouldn't necessarily be kept safe from other people challenging
your ideas."

It's also very SF-centric at times, especially with all the self-help posts,
but it does do a good job at content discovery since I can get a wide range of
topic from the tech industry through to social issues.

I don't know how they'll sell paywalls to users, though. I mean, the internet
has a lot of blogs which are already free to see. Plus, I can use my Pocket
recommended feature for diversity right?

~~~
dang
Yes, the title was an abuse of HN and irredeemably skewed the thread. Someone
else is welcome to repost the article.

~~~
hellofunk
While not true in this particular case, sometimes the title of an article on a
linked page changes, making it appear as if the title submitted to HN was
editorialized. This happened recently with a link I submitted that used the
verbatim title, and I was called out for it when the site's owner changed the
title later.

~~~
dang
That's true, and I'm sorry that got it wrong in your case. The NYT is
particularly fickle with its titles, but usually there's some trace on the
page that lets us know that the submitted title was an earlier version.

~~~
hellofunk
My case it was CNN, not the New York Times, but I guess the lesson is to avoid
sites that do this often if you want to be taken reliably here.

~~~
dang
Nah, it's an edge case that doesn't happen often. Just submit the best
stories. Nothing else matters by comparison.

------
asymmetric
I fail to understand what medium adds to any other blogging platform.
Especially us technical users have dozens of self-hosted alternatives (in
addition to the weird beast that is GitHub pages) that have existed since,
like, forever.

Why lock yourself in a proprietary platform that then, invariably (like we are
seeing now), is going to have to monetize your content?

Why aren't more people bothered by the fact that more and more previously
decentralized/self-hosted models are being transformed to monopolies?

~~~
m52go
> We are going to take things down that are unsafe, that are hate speech, that
> are harassment. It's not a legal obligation, it's an obligation to the
> ecosystem of the site.

Censorship, it seems.

~~~
tehwebguy
These comments kill me.

You may have the right to say whatever you want, but not on a blog I'm hosting
for you.

~~~
leereeves
While that makes sense, when these companies aspire to be the dominant
platform, an oligarchy, or even a monopoly if they could, their power over
public discourse is concerning.

Independent blogs and forums, and even independent media, are declining. The
future is trending toward hosted content, with only a few hosts.

~~~
soared
So, no mods anywhere? You could make the same argument that deleting spam is
censorship.

~~~
leereeves
We accept certain limits on free speech, even when the First Amendment
applies.

Encouraging a few powerful companies to censor anything they like, without
restriction, because their platforms are private property is different from
accepting reasonable censorship.

~~~
tehwebguy
So go start your own! Medium is only 3.5 years old and are just now talking
about revenue. Sounds like there is plenty of room for competition.

Free speech doesn't mean anyone has a responsibility to build and offer what
you want the way you want it just because you want it.

Censorship is a real thing, like when the president of Turkey prosecutes
people for insulting him. There are phrases that literally may not be said in
that country.

Medium isn't telling you your speech isn't legal, but they have no obligation
to lend you a megaphone.

~~~
leereeves
> So go start your own!

Unfortunately most of us aren't billionaires.

 _" The press is free, for anyone that owns one."_

------
nothis
I like the idea that ad-driven business are not sustainable. Ads are
manipulative almost by definition and the world would probably be better
without them (even though it's hard to make an argument for disallowing people
to present their products in the best way possible).

The problem with monetization I see is that internet usage is so far-spread.
The amount of articles I read per week/month might be fairly constant but it's
spread among _dozens_ of sites. I don't want to pay for every single read (as
that would make me think twice about reading stuff) so the only option is a
subscription but then I'd pay $5 or $10 a month for a single site that, last
month, I might have only read 3 articles on.

IMO the only solution would be cross-site subscriptions, i.e. you pay for
"online reading abo" and get access to like 50 sites. I'd also wish that they
then get payed based on how much I read on each site. I'd actually pay for a
service like that.

~~~
pmlnr
This is what [https://flattr.com](https://flattr.com) was supposed to sort
out, isn't it?

~~~
bowlich
It would be interesting to see something like this built into the browser and
then automated. Perhaps sites could send a header detailing where to send the
micro-transaction. You could load up your browser with $X/month and then have
the browser divide the money evenly between all the sites who it crossed
passing that header. Now you don't have to think about it, and if it's built
into say wordpress the content creator only needs to remember to punch their
number into the system.

I pay The Old Reader a $3.00 subscription for RSS each month. I find it a good
fit. I would love to see an inverted RSS where I send a micro-transaction to
everyone on my feed whose published in the month. Again, like RSS, it would be
nice to just have the system be automated. No having to remember to look
someone up on Patreon or Flattr and then manage how much I'm giving them.

------
octo_t
Nice to compare the comments here with
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11222499](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11222499)
("Show HN: Let's encourage ad blocking").

People don't want to pay for content, but they also don't want to see ads...

~~~
wrong_variable
Most people who are reading Medium or are on the internet are broke or in
massive debt (cough Millennials).

They can barely afford rent and food.

If you want to monetize you need to either make medium for baby-boomers or
change your govt.

~~~
matthewcford
People prioritise different things, I see homeless people with smartphones. We
live in an information age, and people value information.

~~~
mtbcoder
What people seem to not value are the channels that produce information.
Information has become ubiquitous, ephemeral and most often freely available
through any other arbitrary channel. For pay walls to work, it's an all-or-
nothing system.

~~~
wrong_variable
Not really.

Information is more valuable then ever.

I would rather pay 10 dollars for Netflix then torrent.

But guess why I do not pay 10 dollars for Netflix ?

Because Netflix is shit for me. Since I do not live in the US.

The hassle of going to a torrent site and deal with porn ads is _cheaper_ and
better then streaming from Netflix.

Since 10 dollar is 45 minutes of working as a programmer - I spend _less_ then
10 minutes a month having to deal with porn ads. Its basic economics. Unless
it takes me 45 minutes of porn ad watching I am not going to switch to Netflix
- as simple as that.

And guess why I get paid 10 dollars ?

Due to the broken immigration Laws which gives employers an upper hand as I
get deported as soon as I lose my job.

Some of the basic needs of life - housing,food - costs me 1/4 of my salary.

And I am at the upper end of the scale - most of my peers are working in
coffee shops in shitty service jobs.

Unless this basic calculus change - good luck monetizing selling articles on
the web.

\-- from a frustrated millennial --

------
onion2k
If this is set up as something like "5 free articles a month, then $0.1 to
read the article, and 70% goes to the author" then I can see it working very
well. Medium has proven that it's capable of attracting some talented writers
and making the content discoverable - of all the content sites out there
Medium feels like the only one I'd really consider subscribing to.

~~~
Disruptive_Dave
Yes, but getting people - enough people - to pay for content is the challenge
here, not having perceived quality content / discoverability.

------
timwaagh
its sad. i like medium. but i do not pay for articles anymore. somebody's
opinion is not worth money. 'free speech' should also mean 'free to access' in
the internet age.

------
laurent123456
I've never understood what's special about medium.com. It seems like any other
blog, Wordpress, Blogger, etc. Plain text articles with some images. Or is
there something more to it?

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Content. You didn't mention the content. Maybe it's the content.

------
JulianMorrison
I really wish people would look into patron funding (eg: Patreon) instead of
paywalls.

------
brudgers
Title: Inside Medium: an attempt to bring civility to the internet

~~~
pmlnr
And did you find that title true after reading the article?

~~~
brudgers
Yes.

------
fsiefken
People here are complaining about potential censorship and paywalls. Perhaps
we can have the best of both worlds and decentralize it, compensate authors
and still provide it free.

Implement it as an Ethereum like dapp/smart contract with the same function as
Patreon for long-form articles. Make the Dapp usable and accessible through
the browser like Instapaper.

Liberate the content, make it 'free' after stretch goals have been reached.
Use community curation through voting contracts similar to the slashdot/hl
karma points.

Also integrate distributed search, automated tagging and perhaps integrated
commenting and Sia or IPFS for distributed storage. And automatically create
an epub versions of the top 12 longforms of the week so people can read their
longform articles offline on e-paper/paper.

------
akerro
It was nice knowing you medium.

------
perlgeek
A paywall for user-generated content? Let's see how well that works. Doesn't
quora do the same thing? How does it work for them?

~~~
leereeves
Does quora have a paywall? I've never bothered to go past the login wall. (I
just Google what I want to read.)

~~~
Piskvorrr
Not paywall, but IMNSHO dancing on the line of shady practices - "you're a
spider? Carry on. You're a human? No text for you, register!"

------
doctorshady
Goodbye Medium. Aaaaand, hello archive.is copy of Medium!

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wslh
How can someone with previous startup experience can be so shortsighted! Ahhh,
now I remember Twitter API restrictions and witch hunting of third party apps
and this is coming from the same business culture.

------
return0
about time.

