mastodon.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
The original server operated by the Mastodon gGmbH non-profit

Administered by:

Server stats:

380K
active users

@dredmorbius Interestingly micropayments do exist for online news, implemented in a very round-about way: Assumming they're charged by the kilobyte readers pay to view & be tracked by the ads. Which eventually makes its way back to the newssite.

@alcinnz Yeah, nah.

"Repudiation as the micropayments killer feature (Not)"
old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/c

NB: Ignore "repudiation" in the title for now --- that's just one of many scamsWschemes to plaster over a turd which fails to address the underlying failures.

Yes, someone can prop up a shitty fucked up micropayments fallacy for a time. It won't solve the general media issue.

Information-as-a-public-good will.

$15.40/person-month for ads-free news. ($8 with ads).

Another $6.50 buys you all-you-can-eat book access.

No tracking, no monitoring, no ads, no bullshit.

Pro-rate by HH wealth/income for equal access.

news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3

redditRepudiation as the micropayments killer feature (Not)Over a two-part series at the occasionally-promising [_Evonomics_](http://evonomics.com) website, science fiction and Transparent Society author...

@mathew Apple, or Google, or Amazon, or Facebook taking on this role is of course one option, and one that I'm aware of.

I think it's ultimately more problematic.

The ISP-gateway relationship already exists. And there's billing built in to it.

Generally, people will receive broadband / Internet connectivity:

  • Through a wired residential or commercial service (cable, DSL, fibre, microwave beam, ...)

  • Through a mobile provider.

  • In some cases, satellite Internet, with Starlink likely an increasingly prevalent source.

  • Incidental access through some local PoP (point of presence), which itself relies on one of the above.

Other than satellite, each of these reliies on some entity with a local physical presence.

And with whom local regulators and publishers could reach agreements.

Again a key obligation I'd like to see is that 1) no good-faith publisher could be refused, 2) that no exclusive distribution arrangements where multiple connectivity providers exist be permitted, and that 3) no clients be denied content access. That is, there's a common carrier / common access obligation at the carrier, publishier, and recipient levels.

@alcinnz