
Exploring alternative funding models for the web - blueant
https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2019/02/25/exploring-alternative-funding-models-for-the-web/
======
jerrac
For a long time I've thought that we need a browser based universal tip jar.
Some way that lets me read a blog post, and then tip the site with however
much I want. 1 cent, 25 cents, 1 dollar, 200 dollars, any amount.

From my understanding of things, the biggest thing in the way is that
processing payments costs money.

The second thing is making sure the money goes where it is supposed to. With
services like Scroll, the site owner has to register with Scroll. Patreon
requires the user register to send money to the site owner.

So, here's a thought, Mozilla should create a tip jar non-profit organization.
Tipping would be something built into Firefox. If you tip someone, it's sent
to the non-profit's bank, and connected to the url. Site owners could then
register with the non-profit, in manner similar to Google Webmaster tools,
that would let them access the tips they've received.

Anyway, implementation would be pretty difficult, but I'd rather something
like that than hope that my favorite blogger is somehow able to get onto
Scroll or another service like that.

~~~
hiccuphippo
What happens with the tips sent to a website that doesn't register with
Mozilla? Maybe there should be a standard meta tag that websites can add to
show they are looking for tips. And then they can even add a URL on the tag so
they can use another provider if for some reason they don't want Mozilla to be
the gatekeeper of their tip jar.

But then again, they can just add the link in the website itself like they
already do.

~~~
jboynyc
Beaker Browser has (a version of) this feature -- you can specify a donate
link for your dat site, and the browser then displays a heart button that
takes you to that page.

~~~
jerrac
Never heard of Beaker before. A quick skim of their site makes me interested.
Thanks for sharing about it. :)

------
jasode
_> One such partner that we are collaborating with is Scroll. [...] The
service enables web users to pay for an ad-free experience on their favorite
sites, across their devices._

To try and understand what this is, I go to the landing page of partner's
site, Scroll: [https://scroll.com/](https://scroll.com/)

Their webpage has no obvious explanation of what this is. Is this a tip jar?
Micropayments? Subscription?

I then go to Scroll's blog: [https://scroll.blog/](https://scroll.blog/)

Way way down the page, it finally has this blurb:

 _> Be a flat monthly subscription at a price consumers would happily pay._

Ok... so what's the price? $9.99/month? $19.99/month?

I see Scroll is offering invitations. Would users signing up with their email
know the price? Or is it a free trial?

~~~
jasode
Fyi... I later found an older article (2018) that said it was $5/month:
[https://www.niemanlab.org/2018/02/scroll-the-5-month-news-
su...](https://www.niemanlab.org/2018/02/scroll-the-5-month-news-subscription-
startup-signs-up-the-atlantic-business-insider-fusion-media-group-slate-and-
others/)

Since Scroll's landing page today in 2019 does not prominently display
"$5/month" anywhere, it signals to me that Scroll may have changed its mind
about that $5 amount and has yet to commit to a publicized and transparent
monthly price. With the "Request Invitation" button, are they collecting
emails to gauge the level of interest to help them determine a price?

If Scroll is actually still charging $5/month, why not make that fact obvious
on its website?

Google search doesn't show much written about Scroll by Tony Haile in 2019:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=scroll+haile+subscription+pr...](https://www.google.com/search?q=scroll+haile+subscription+price+-elder)

(To add more confusion, there's another _unrelated_ website that charges
$5/month with a similar name:
[https://scroll.in/subscribe](https://scroll.in/subscribe))

------
brycehamrick
I've come to the conclusion that advertising is the only viable monetization
model for most content businesses. This is not a new phenomenon, this is the
same reason advertising is dominated television (even paid cable channels),
print media like newspapers and magazines, and even in sports. The economics
of it are pretty straightforward—customers simply don't value most content at
what it costs to produce it.

I do a good amount of media buying and content production. From where I stand,
the issue is in the consolidation of power. Content discovery and ad placement
are far too closely related, which is bad for everyone involved (well, all but
the ad platforms). Going directly to publishers is possible but difficult,
it's not currently a scalable solution.

~~~
Townley
It's definitely viable, but I'm not sure about it being the only way.

Netflix shows that there's an appetite towards paying for content, and HBO
furthers the idea while demonstrating how that same approach can be much more
profitable.

For journalism side, premium, niche publications like The Information putting
bets on the idea that users are willing to pay a lot of money for content as
long as it's much better and more useful than the free alternatives.

~~~
kadendogthing
>Netflix shows that there's an appetite towards paying for content

Content that was originally created with advertising money (The Office).
Whether or not Netflix will last the next 5 years is debatable and unknown.

------
Zolomon
[https://flattr.com/](https://flattr.com/)

------
soheil
I think what a lot of these models miss is the consent part of the system. In
ads you don't give explicit consent to pay the publisher but they do get paid.
I think that psychological element is both very obvious and almost always
ignored with any new model. If we want to make a successful model we have to
maybe borrow good ideas from models that are most successful today and lack of
explicit consent is absolutely one of them. This reminds of the water my plant
project where someone created a bot controlled by a subreddit to water a
plant. Can we sort of allow access to a money account that we, the user, own
but controlled by someone else? What would happen if any website publisher
could withdraw from that account based on their judgement? There would need to
be some obvious limits in place.

------
nfoz
The web doesn't need a funding model.

Many content providers want a funding model for their work. That's fine.
Nothing to do with the web, specifically.

IMO the web technology is and should be totally orthogonal to the needs of
some businesses that happen to want to use it.

The web should be a mechanism for people to publish documents. That's it. And
that's great. In fact we should be making it easier for normal humans to do
this. The web had lots of excellent content long before anyone expected they
would profit _directly_ from eyeballs on their web-content.

------
gwbas1c
Honestly, I just want a subscription model like Netflix or Google Music: A
nominal monthly fee for ad-free access to most content on most major websites.

~~~
rolltiide
Paid by the ISP which I already pay for

~~~
rubbingalcohol
Why should Comcast pay for peoples' hentai blogs?

Problems like creating an online tipping protocol could be addressed with work
on new web standards, not private partnerships with for-profit companies
spearheaded by a single browser developer. If something like this could work,
it needs to be an open standard. I appreciate Mozilla's work on this important
issue, but don't think they are even starting with the right approach.

~~~
rolltiide
> Why should Comcast pay for peoples' hentai blogs?

It wouldn't, and this whole subthread of tipping is way off from what this
article and service provider is even on about. So since we aren't actually
talking about micropayment tipping, lets continue:

Having the ISP handle both the subscription and payment would be reducing and
bundling a pooled monthly subscription away from consumers.

------
Deimorz
This is from February, not something new.

(It's still from 2019 so HN probably won't add that info to the title)

------
Joakal
Exploring alternative funding models for the web publishers*

That said, if it's so little money in it due to ads. Then shop around. If
you're going to complain about the elephant in the room, Google being the only
choice, then create your own ad network and charge more. Google has such a
monopoly, that you may be getting pennies for every thousands they get. As
well, ad blockers are becoming a fact of life that there's no solution for.

My opinion; Incredibly, the only way for publishers to publish on Internet and
still have food on table is UBI. Sucks if you are the business owner though.

------
jonahhorowitz
Google Contributor already solved this problem in a way that every site that
runs ads can handle without having to opt-in to an alternative payment
universe. Of course, Google shut down Contributor, but if anyone has the
ability to reimplement it on a large scale it's probably Firefox (or
Microsoft, or Apple I guess).

It's pretty straightforward. You bid on ads on the user's behalf, and you show
them cat pictures - or nothing, user's choice. The ad revenue still goes to
the website and the user doesn't have to see ads. Everyone gets what they want
and _this is really important_ sites don't have to opt-in.

I've run large internet sites and we'd get email into our webmaster@ address
saying we'd be tipped by some users and if we went to sign up we could claim
our $3.35 or something. Nobody got time for that. Just use the existing
payment rails (the ad system).

If over time the sites saw more people using this, they might change their
business model to support subscriptions or something and cut the exchanges out
of the middle, but to start, this would work.

I hate how everyone wants to reinvent the wheel. _looking at you Brave_. We
don't need cryptocurrency to solve this.

------
afewminsofcode
I read about puma browser that is using coil to power an alternate funding
model. Sounds interesting. [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/puma-
browser](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/puma-browser)
[https://coil.com/](https://coil.com/)

------
Simulacra
Doesn’t Brave already do this?

------
cromwellian
I think the basic problem with all these schemes is people don’t want to pay
for most content, the entire concept of ‘surfing’ the web is frictionless
interactions with content and constantly needing to make decisions about
whether to buy something, even if it were pennies, is a cognitive burden that
forced accounting and a shopping mentality on a reader who just wants to fall
down the rabbit hole of link chasing.

Sure, some high quality long form content can pull this off, but would I pay
for the Verge, or say, MKBHD’s reviews? No. Maybe Anandtech once in a while.

There’s a paradox of choice as well.

------
nwienert
If anything gets adopted it either needs to be from a group of big players
(think: Libra) or in a decentralized way with a consortium (blockchain + 2
major browsers). Would love to see it happen, but having a startup run it just
won’t surmount the needed push to make it a standard.

------
tannhaeuser
The tier where to implement this seems (mobile) Telcos who have already your
details, a customer account, etc., and who are on the regulatory hook anyway.

------
ilaksh
Firefox should build in support for real cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and
Ethereum. Maybe create some Web Payments API for it or something.

------
jammygit
I was considering building a system similar to scroll, but now that it exists
and is in use... that’s nice :) I hope things go well for them!

------
krmbzds
Did you mean: Brave Browser? [https://brave.com/](https://brave.com/)

------
Sphax
If they don't add a way to opt out of those "random surveys" I'll be pretty
pissed.

~~~
sp332
Firefox is working on a first-party JS popup blocker. They're collecting data
on them now. You can report them with this add-on:
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/in-page-
pop-u...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/in-page-pop-up-
reporter/) Chrome version: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/in-page-
pop-up-rep...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/in-page-pop-up-
reporter/dkpphegmeomaffjanagefmejpeebfcmh)

