Ask HN: Can we have a open platform to pay credits for web posts at one place

1 pointszameermfm1y ago4 comments

I can't read a webpage without ads killing the reading experience. Can't we build either open integration or consortium of sorts where we pay credits in just one platform to be redeemed across the web, instead of managing 100000s subscription. It can be credits system. Pay credits share can go to the respective sites as with the user consumption with the site. We can reload the credits anytime. Or we can go the subscription route, credits would make more sense.

Let's discuss why this is a very bad idea.

4 comments

throwaway_20251y ago

Podcasting 2.0 is exploring similar paradigms with The Lightning Network. Decentralized. Cross border. Open protocol.

I personally think the barrier to entry is still high for the payee/payer. But it seems like a solvable problem. Probably some browser extension that can help trigger the transaction when you navigate to a compliant site.

When you start paying with micro transactions for content like a blog post or a medium article, you quickly trip over burdensome creditcard fees.

zameermfmOP1y ago

Barrier to entry, true. Building website network is also a problem, but they do have incentive as even all posts becomes a source of revenue, not just the ones behind paywall.

1. Decentralized - one way 2. Wikipedia style - centralized and non profit.

With credit system, anyone can buy them in excess and utilize it for years.

anenefan1y ago

It might seem like a good idea to have a central or multiple pay pass areas that would automatically pay our way while we surf the web, however it a short time the web would be more scammed up than it already is.

I don't pay for subscriptions as I'm not planning to support the million or so news sites out there every day of the year ... and mostly I find the original non walled news item. Politically slanted opinion pieces might be particular to some news site, honestly they can keep it - sad they then have to advertise it with teasers - from what I've seen viewing the article in its entirety, ok yeah more times than not, the rest behind the curtain was actually a no brainer for those who've been paying attention.

I don't use an ad blocker but I have a long deny list of scum APIs and trackers that have done their dash being too intrusive - and I'm still sometimes surprised how many sites think I run an ad blocker. Also some years ago I used a browser that one click turned all images turned off, sadly the web moved on and it had it's design issues as well. Still since webp is not enabled - my system largely the same before webp arrived on the scene, but if you have firefox there's an addon [1] IMO, more and more ads use webp as I've noted less and less imagery clutter from ads over the last year or two.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dont-accept-w...

reify1y ago

Why pay anything when we have the wonderful Ublock-origin.

I haven't seen an ad on any webpage for years.

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