On: The company behind Adblock Plus is acquiring micropayment service Flattr

[intrasight]

I do like the idea of micropayments for content. But doing so under the auspices of an ad-blocking tool or any client-side tool smells too much like a protection/extortion racket. This should be handled by the publishers themselves.

[dageshi → intrasight]

The record industry was incapable of doing that, it had to be imposed by outside companies. The TV/Movie industry is incapable of doing that, it has been imposed by Netflix/Amazon e.t.c. I don't think large publishers are any more capable of building their own micropayments system than either of the other industries I cited, they've certainly had long enough to try.

[belovedeagle → dageshi]

Offtopic, but "etc." isn't an acronym or initialism so shouldn't have periods after each letter. It is an abbreviation for "et cetera".

Fun fact: historically it could also be rendered &c., because, after all, the ampersand is itself just a ligature for "et".

[dageshi → belovedeagle]

You're right, I really don't know where I picked that up from, but I think I've been doing it for a long time now, don't think I can break the habit.

[nathanaldensr → belovedeagle]

Maybe they're saying that the Elite Tauren Chieftain imposed it? :-D

[intrasight → dageshi]

But those are both examples of subscriptions businesses - which the publishers already do.

[viewer5 → intrasight]

This actually gave me a bad taste until I read your comment, now I'm wondering if that exact situation might be a positive. Maybe it's a plus if they can say "We're hiding your ads, but here's an alternative" rather than simply "We're hiding your ads", full-stop.

[eveningcoffee → viewer5]

The question is does the alternative provide privacy or replaces it with another tracking tool.

[donarb → intrasight]

Where in the article does it say that Flattr is going to be integrated into the AdBlock software?