cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/4017115
Related material, not all as optimistic as the ABC news article:
I think you’re looking at this UN a “how can we fix things” way while my comments are more idealistic. If advertising never existed, then something like the micropsyment platform I mentioned would have coalesced to find content.
As this are - there’s probably no pathway from the current status quo to my proposed idealist utopia.
Yeah that’s fair. I was being rather clumsy with my wording, and sort of doing a bit of both the pragmatic and idealistic approach, without clearly distinguishing when I was doing which. I think idealistically there’s a lot of good to be said for the micropayment system, but it’s not necessarily as much of a clear-cut good as you suggest. There are still equity issues at play as described above. There are also practical questions. Would every single site charge precisely the same amount? Would it be per page view or per user? Per page but with a cap on monthly spend per user? All this could be addressed of course, but would either create an equity issue distinct from the above-mentioned one, or would create awkward UX interactions for the user to manage their expenditure. Ads have the benefit of being both completely equitable and dead simple.
