Here's an unanswered question:
I have money and I have a URL, how do I send money to the publisher of that URL?
URLs tell you where to get content on the web, but they don't tell you anything about how to support the person who created the content. This story might sound similar to paying open source maintainers, where a user can almost abstract an entire project to a single download URL.
There are tons of people creating content for the web and plenty of ways to get paid (Patreon, Kofi, GitHub Sponsors, YouTube Paid Membership), but there's no standardized way to direct someone interested in paying for the content of a page in the right direction.
We have HTML meta headers for many things, including where to find an RSS feed or what my Fediverse handle is, but none for enumerating options to pay the creator of the content. I wish I could click a button to easily send a "tip" to someone who created something I enjoy or to browse other options for supporting them.
Existing technology
Payment Request API
There are things like the web "Payment Request API" which gives you a JavaScript API for generating a payment, but this doesn't fit my criteria.
For one: this means that every person creating content for the web needs to add JavaScript to their page. This is a much higher bar than simply linking to existing payment methods that a creator already likely uses to get paid. Being difficult means it's unlikely for large numbers of people to do the work.
I also don't see being able to automate this because of the JavaScript. Web creators likely have existing payment pages that they'd much rather link out to instead of trying to handle payments themselves individually.
Lastly, this API exists and I don't see it being used by creators today. That should say something about either its ease-of-use or return on investment from potential supporters.
Linking to payment methods in the page
Yeah, we could scrape the payment URLs we know about embedded in the page. But
there's a difference between potential URLs in the page due to non-creator
generated content (links in comments, etc) and whatever the "authoritative"
URLs are for paying the creator of the page. Being able to set <meta> tags
in <head> is typically a higher bar than setting arbitrary URLs in the <body>.
Podcasting 2.0 RSS <podcast:funding> tag
Podcasting 2.0 supports basically the exact tag that I want to use which encodes a URL and a human-readable name for that URL into the metadata description of a podcast publication. Really great to see some prior art here.
Thanks to DamonHD for sending me this reference.
Web Monetization and Payment Link
Both of these are existing monetization / payment web standards, these look to be mostly what I'd need to scrape an identifier from a page.
Both are fairly similar from first reading, there's Web Monetization and and the newer Payment Link.
Jeffery Yaskin for sending me these references.
Flattr
Flattr is a service that tried to turn a "subscription" from users into micro-payouts based on a users' browsing history. Flattr shut down in 2023. This approach isn't one I'm interested in replicating for a few reasons:
- Access to the entire browsing history feels like a privacy nightmare. Yes you receive a "complete" sample of which web pages a user has visited but, yeah this doesn't seem great?
- Flattr tried to create its own payment platform for creators, rather than pushing users to send monetary support through existing stable payment methods like Patreon. They had to do this because of the micro-payments thing.
In general this is making me think micro-payments is extremely hard to do. I think having a handful of dedicated fans for small creators might be enough to "offset" the "loss" of micro-payments? Perhaps there can be a recommendation to note to users when certain creators are "niche" and therefore are receiving fewer payments relative to other creators and thus would benefit more from a contribution / boost?
Thanks to Quentin for sending me this reference.
Brave
I know about Brave, and I would like to avoid crypto in my solution. Also many of the creators I pay for don't use crypto but do have multiple payment methods. I don't think the solution should require creators AND users adopt new technology to work.
Why federate just the social web?
Article by Pelle Westman on the monetary and media web being federated, not only the social web from 2012.
What happens now?
I'm no stranger to standards, so maybe I do some research and write a web standard proposal? Seems like fun! I'm imagining something like:
<head>
<!-- ... -->
<meta property="financial-support" content="https://patreon.com/c/MatthewCarlson">
</head>
Because this is primarily for money, no doubt it will be abused to hell. First-party browsers probably wouldn't do anything with this information for the fear of legitimizing scammers' fake profiles.
The existence of the "Web Payments API" makes me think maybe it's not a huge deal and that whenever money gets involved peoples' spidey-senses start going off about whether a page is legitimate? Not sure.
Let me know what you think!
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