> It's hard to pull it off without relying on the oligopoly entities.
Right--as I said, that's a problem, and I'd actually say it's hard enough to be effectively impossible.
Then again, I'm not sure how this is an objection to donation-based monetization of content creation as opposed to ads, given the average content creator isn't running their own ad network.
> It's a difference if I go to my tax preparer and hand him twelve advertising revenue bills or if I'm handing him a wad of receipts by individual people.
I'm not sure I understand this. It's not a wad of receipts, it's a single spreadsheet of receipts with a total at the bottom if you've set it up at all reasonably. I'm not convinced this is a real problem.
> They are, but good luck getting people used to free content to pay that range. Even 99.9% of Onlyfxns models rarely make a single subscriber above that. Cheap mass content is what the market wants (no matter if in porn or blogs), you got to fulfill a very specific niche if you want to lure in some whales.
I'm not sure where you're getting your data here. I had a Substack and was able to get a number of $100/year or $10/month subscribers within only a few posts, by providing well-thought-out educational content for an audience with disposable income. A commitment to posting weekly ended up being stressful so I ditched the Substack, refunded where it made sense, and am slowly working toward publishing it as a book. This is probably a less-profitable route, but it's more conducive to my mental health.
I'm not saying it's easy, but it's not that hard.
> people will automatically discard your opinion simply because you offer crypto
The sorts of content which I would recommend using crypto for as a workaround for centralized payment processors tends to not be reputation based. If you're writing a blog about permaculture, sure, people might discard your opinion because you accept crypto, but you also probably aren't likely to have your blog payments canceled. If you're writing a smut blog that might have credit card processing revoked nobody was reading it because they cared about your opinion.
> - the NFT and shitcoin crazes as well as the environmental issues crypto has (e-waste, CO2 footprint, ...) have burnt so many people that offering crypto acceptance these days outside of anonymity context (e.g. VPNs, piracy) is just as negative on your brand as paying for Twitter Blue is (which is why Musk decided to not show any more if an account is legacy-verified or Twitter Blue subscriber).
If you respond to what is actually in my post, you'll note that privacy is exactly the context I was suggesting cryptocurrency for.
> - can't do KYC any more so you have a harder time doing taxes (may be more of an European problem, given the IRS seems to even allow you to enter crime proceedings - if I would do that on my taxes here in Germany, I'd get the cops knocking on my door)
There's nothing stopping you from doing KYC in addition to accepting USDC if accepting cryptocurrency is merely a workaround for having your payment processor canceled. Accepting anonymous payments is obviously off the table where KYC is required.
> - your whole infrastructure will now be targeted by sometimes highly sophisticated attackers going after your coins
There's very little reason to actually ever hold coins for a significant amount of time, so losses if they occur should be minimal.
"Infrastructure" in this case can be generating a memo ID to associate transactions with KYC before they are able to view the payment address, which can be the address of a paper wallet. This doesn't require a sophisticated knowledge of crypto.
> As a user, all I have at a moment is to look how the content currently is. I have no recourse when the author decides to sell out, similarly to what happened to MANY Chrome extensions that suddenly went and embedded malware (e.g. [1]), or when they / their database get inevitably hacked.
Sure. When you buy a book, you're worried that the author might write a bad book in the future? If so, I don't suspect your concern is shared by most content consumers.
I'm not sure the risks of running code that can auto-update itself are really relevant to content. So far I haven't heard of anyone figuring out how to go into my brain and auto-update my memory of blog posts I've read, and I'm quite happy to pay for things if I've already learned from them.
A lot of these objections are a bit odd. What's your reason for preferring ad-supported content?
> A lot of these objections are a bit odd. What's your reason for preferring ad-supported content?
I don't like ad-supported content and hate tracking with a passion. However, it's reasonable to say that, at least at the moment, advertising is
- easier (and not just technically, but also from the bureaucratic side!) to implement than donations or "real" payments, and note that some countries like Germany make a legal distinction between these when it comes to taxes, and mis-classifying income as donations comes with severe penalties
- guaranteed, predictable income for authors
- zero effort for the reader
- zero direct, financial risks for the reader
The result of this is the current, mostly ad supported crap infrastructure we currently have on the Internet.
Personally, I'd advocate for drastic banking regulation and tax code changes to make paying for online content easier so that regular people can take advantage too, without going through middlemen extracting rent everywhere:
- for clearly non-commercial content which most personal blogs/vlogs/podcasts fall into, completely exempt donations from tax and other bureaucratic (AML, KYC, invoices) requirements
- create a globally usable (!) financial network with no censorship other than what's illegal in the recipient's country, low caps on transfer fees (0.1%), real-time transfers and "deposit only" accounts, so that transferring money across countries actually gets realistic, and I can offer my bank account number without having to fear someone draining my account. SEPA gets pretty close to that, but it's not joined with the US, Australia or Asia so at the moment there is no alternative for cross-continental donations other than to rely on PayPal and friends.
You bring up a lot of real problems and good solutions, but ultimately I don't see an argument for the existence of ads in your post. If anything, advertising is one of the reasons a lot of the problems you mention exist. If it weren't so easy to monetize garbage with ads, there would be greater demand for easier payment solutions.
I'll also add, about this supposed benefit of ads:
> - zero direct, financial risks for the reader
"Direct" is doing a lot of work here. Ads absolutely are a financial risk to readers. "You can just not buy the product" puts a lot more faith in human agency than is warranted. Everyone buys goods and services they don't need, or which are worse than less-advertised alternatives, because of advertising. People are manipulable and that includes you (and me). No one is immune. Even if you never see an ad, your friends pass bad information from ads to you. Even if you aren't easily fooled by lies, advertisers have a great deal of control over what truth gets placed in front of you. You are being manipulated into spending money by ads--it's practically unavoidable in today's society--and if you aren't taking steps to protect yourself, you are being manipulated even more.
Arguably financial harm isn't even the most fundamental harm done by ads--I'd argue that the psychological harm done by ads is actually worse.
Right--as I said, that's a problem, and I'd actually say it's hard enough to be effectively impossible.
Then again, I'm not sure how this is an objection to donation-based monetization of content creation as opposed to ads, given the average content creator isn't running their own ad network.
> It's a difference if I go to my tax preparer and hand him twelve advertising revenue bills or if I'm handing him a wad of receipts by individual people.
I'm not sure I understand this. It's not a wad of receipts, it's a single spreadsheet of receipts with a total at the bottom if you've set it up at all reasonably. I'm not convinced this is a real problem.
> They are, but good luck getting people used to free content to pay that range. Even 99.9% of Onlyfxns models rarely make a single subscriber above that. Cheap mass content is what the market wants (no matter if in porn or blogs), you got to fulfill a very specific niche if you want to lure in some whales.
I'm not sure where you're getting your data here. I had a Substack and was able to get a number of $100/year or $10/month subscribers within only a few posts, by providing well-thought-out educational content for an audience with disposable income. A commitment to posting weekly ended up being stressful so I ditched the Substack, refunded where it made sense, and am slowly working toward publishing it as a book. This is probably a less-profitable route, but it's more conducive to my mental health.
I'm not saying it's easy, but it's not that hard.
> people will automatically discard your opinion simply because you offer crypto
The sorts of content which I would recommend using crypto for as a workaround for centralized payment processors tends to not be reputation based. If you're writing a blog about permaculture, sure, people might discard your opinion because you accept crypto, but you also probably aren't likely to have your blog payments canceled. If you're writing a smut blog that might have credit card processing revoked nobody was reading it because they cared about your opinion.
> - the NFT and shitcoin crazes as well as the environmental issues crypto has (e-waste, CO2 footprint, ...) have burnt so many people that offering crypto acceptance these days outside of anonymity context (e.g. VPNs, piracy) is just as negative on your brand as paying for Twitter Blue is (which is why Musk decided to not show any more if an account is legacy-verified or Twitter Blue subscriber).
If you respond to what is actually in my post, you'll note that privacy is exactly the context I was suggesting cryptocurrency for.
> - can't do KYC any more so you have a harder time doing taxes (may be more of an European problem, given the IRS seems to even allow you to enter crime proceedings - if I would do that on my taxes here in Germany, I'd get the cops knocking on my door)
There's nothing stopping you from doing KYC in addition to accepting USDC if accepting cryptocurrency is merely a workaround for having your payment processor canceled. Accepting anonymous payments is obviously off the table where KYC is required.
> - your whole infrastructure will now be targeted by sometimes highly sophisticated attackers going after your coins
There's very little reason to actually ever hold coins for a significant amount of time, so losses if they occur should be minimal.
"Infrastructure" in this case can be generating a memo ID to associate transactions with KYC before they are able to view the payment address, which can be the address of a paper wallet. This doesn't require a sophisticated knowledge of crypto.
> As a user, all I have at a moment is to look how the content currently is. I have no recourse when the author decides to sell out, similarly to what happened to MANY Chrome extensions that suddenly went and embedded malware (e.g. [1]), or when they / their database get inevitably hacked.
Sure. When you buy a book, you're worried that the author might write a bad book in the future? If so, I don't suspect your concern is shared by most content consumers.
I'm not sure the risks of running code that can auto-update itself are really relevant to content. So far I haven't heard of anyone figuring out how to go into my brain and auto-update my memory of blog posts I've read, and I'm quite happy to pay for things if I've already learned from them.
A lot of these objections are a bit odd. What's your reason for preferring ad-supported content?