In a way it was more mature in the sense of what makes the world go round.
Without money data centers and infrastructure don’t happen.
So now instead of microtransactions we get plastered with ads ad nauseam.
In a way it was more mature in the sense of what makes the world go round.
Without money data centers and infrastructure don’t happen.
So now instead of microtransactions we get plastered with ads ad nauseam.
We the consumers are the ones who paid the infra with our monthly teleco bill.
It really doesn’t pay for the billions in infra, maintenance and personnel. You’d have to pay quite a bit more.
In my country 45.6 million homes pay each month around +30€ to have fiber to the home.
That is around 162 billion a year in cash flow.
The biggest provider operational costs are aroud 37B. For everything, not only fiber. And controls 50% of the FTTH market.
I mean is quick maths but looks like it does pay for it.
I think microtransaction methods still exist using cryptocurrencies. They were going to be difficult without crypto anyway, because of the hurdles that the stubborn national authorities put up in the way of an international payment system.
Microstransactions are a massive on iOS and android using “non-crypto” currency and have been for many years.
Micro transactions work fine. If there was any real demand on the web, browsers would incorporate them seamlessly.
But people don’t want to pay even a single cent for a 10 minute article.
I definitely would, if payments in 10s of cents was possible.
But we only get full on subscription that are at least few euros per month and those are annoying to manage and it's quite complicated to evaluate the value beforehand (unlike say a traditional magazine that you can buy as a single issue to test before subbing).
And when you find one-time payments, they are usually high price (around 3€ minimum seems to be the usual) and worse than that, you rarely can own the stuff. You purchase "access" with a license and no way to really save the thing as your own, making the whole thing a bit of a joke, and piracy the only truly sane solution.
I don't think that is true.
A seamless ubiquitous interface and accounting system for penny sized transactions hasn't been introduced anywhere I am aware of.
It would need to be incredibly convenient, easy, reliable, secure, private. With flexible permissioning (subscription list, ok to pay list, etc.) so people were not hammered by "Do you want to pay?" popups all the live long day.
Brave tries. Maybe one day this will be the solution along with Kagi.
Payment Request API is a thing and it looks kinda nice, except apparently nobody cares about it.