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points by whycome 14 hours ago | 0 comments

Vox is paywalled too?

Dunno. There's this https://wallhop.io/https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/12/720...

it doesn't paywall for me

Being paywalled is not an issue (better than ad-ridden), but not being able to have micro transaction in a browser with one click still is mind boggling. As a creator of a browser, taking some blame for that.

[–] cowlevel 13 hours ago

I can do that. I can click on my credit card autofill and then "pay", so two clicks.

But sites won't let me do that, they want me to make an account first and they want to verify my email address and phone number which means leaving my browser and restarting the process each time I do because the browser got unloaded and the website doesn't save state. Almost all of the friction here is the fault of the website, not the payment process.

Usually I just can't make an account on a mobile device because of the browser unloading, so if it's important I do it later with my PC and if it's not important I give up entirely.

[–] lkbm 13 hours ago

Well, a micro-transaction on your credit card isn't a great solution, since the base fee is something like $0.10 per transaction. You'll want a system to fill a low-transaction-fee wallet and then distribute from there.

Youtube Premium is a pretty good system. I pay $16/mo, and 55% of that gets distributed to creators based on my watch time.

[–] tim333 13 hours ago

There are lots of ways to do the tech without a $0.10 fee. I think the issue is more the websites don't ask for that, probably because $10 a month in one easy annualised payment of $120 pays better.

I'm not sure if there's an actual website that did it? I've made micropayments for other things like PAYG phones and speculating on crypto.

[–] mentalgear 12 hours ago

There were attempts to bring micro-transactions to the browser via W3C standards - but guess who obstructed it? Yes, the big G that's running the browser with most market-share (Chrome) and who's entire business-model it having your data so only they can be the middle man between you and ads. Imagine if people could just support what they like with one click, instead of getting dumped on with paid propaganda and disinformation so that the middle men fill their pocket.