Nostr Web Client

I pay to be censored as well.

Doesn't affect my points at all.

Wasnt supposed to. Take a breath.

I'm taking about 16 per minute. What was the point then if not to add to the discussion in some way?

Let it go. You sound like one of them Twitter fucks.

You respond to my shit with something that has nothing to do with my points and then tell me to let it go when I respond.

Lol You sound like a retard who should just mute me or not respond if you don't want to converse with me. I'll survive.

Done.

₿oniz23⚡️🏴‍☠️🇮🇹 8mo ago

The price to pay for not seeing the advertising havoc is too high in my opinion 🤷‍♂️

That's a big part of my point. The cost of doing the same on Nostr would probably be a lot more.

₿oniz23⚡️🏴‍☠️🇮🇹 8mo ago

Yes, I really think so! So what do you think it would mean? 🤔

What would what mean?

₿oniz23⚡️🏴‍☠️🇮🇹 8mo ago

Yes

William ₿ Travis 8mo ago

I just watch on Brave which blocks the ads.

https://video.nostr.build/48cb77bae32cf26e1f7fd2065bea076b15da5a524020a02f90e61223785b2d7c.mp4

William ₿ Travis 8mo ago

hmm. I liked your cartoon, so I rewarded you with a payment. I imagine this could scale.

That money goes to the content, not to the service hosting the content.

It's the services that struggle to make money on Nostr because they don't automatically get a cut of the content income.

I also pay for YT Premium. Also have a Spotify account and donate to various charities and I have a whole slew of paid relays that I subscribe to and I zap people.

There's always someone paying for stuff and it's me.

Unfortunately, the numbers suggest that we are a minority.

I'm actually sort of okay with that, as I'm a fren of freemium models, since the Church runs the same way and that's worked for millenia.

The people who pay (through subscriptions and/or zaps) are the most influential users and everything is fitted to their tastes. They tend to pay a lot, at the beginning, but the more people join them, the lower the price per member is.

They're like the group that meets every Thursday and Saturday night at the pub for burgers and poker. The pub owner knows who exactly is paying to keep the lights on, and nobody else may sit at their table.

Universal licenses, like taxes, are actually an attempt to get away from the freemium model that markets tend to naturally fall into, so that a minority doesn't get to be overly influential. Freemium is at the opposite end of democracy. It's more like aristocracy.

I'm okay with that, tho. Some people are naturally aristocratic, and some simply aren't. And it's not purely about money, as there are very poor people who end up influential because of volunteer work they do, or being unusually productive or generous, and stuff. It's more like a personality type. And there are very wealthy people who refuse to pay for anything they can get free.

Humans fall into the pareto principle and markets follow along. Leadership is always earned in some way.

With over 250 million users, that makes less than 10% subscribing.

I used global numbers in my note with the calculations. I came up with 4%.

But I also found 100M total Premium subscribers as the figure.

Doesn't surprise me, that Americans pay more often. Everyone knows that they're the most valuable customers.

One of the things I learned in logistics is how much "ethnic personality" pays into planning deliveries. Germans tend to cough up lots of money for anything high-tech, but are miserly about their food. So, they Italians us their top of the line kitchen appliances and their half-rotten tomatoes.

I had a hard time finding exact numbers, but either way, it was low enough that I feel the point is the same. I just don't think YT as it is would survive right now without ads. Regardless of why that is for various markets. There are some markets where people simply couldn't afford to pay using money. Or at least not the amounts I can easily pay. My base point really is that we oversimplify shit like this and default to shitting on companies even though users are driving the behaviors for the most part. Otherwise they would go broke.

Well, Nostr sort of passed the YouTube buck back to the users, by requiring them to host their own videos. Services are the biggest cost, not software, so we can turn a profit at a much lower price point.

And a lot of people who upload content to YouTube pay for Premium because YT is a pain to use, otherwise. And I suspect premium users are less-likely to get censored or have their stuff removed to free up disk space.

Everyone who has our premium subscription will also automatically get our media server, for example, as we'll put their publication images in there when converting, unless they say otherwise. And only they can use the converter, as conversion is expensive. Same with semantic (image) searches, deep search, grammar checks, translations, exporting publications, etc. Anything that is a service can just get cut off or redirecting to your own service. <>

It's the same with YT or Spotify. I don't even notice the Premium features, until I try to use it without logging in on a computer and then it's like...

?🤔 Where is the button for..?

You make some interesting points, which inspire more thought. YT probably wouldn't be so shitty if users paid for it. Instead, YT is making decisions based on what ad buyers want. They sort of have to. But that isn't the case for Premium. Another similar example was the whole interface fiasco. I messaged them and told them I was canceling if they didn't leave my shit alone. They said they would and I never dealt with it. Those who pay have the say. It's just the reality.

And I agree Nostr did toss it back to the users. That's not bad. I think it's great. But that also means there is no real alternative to YT and likely won't be for many years. At least not on Nostr.

YouTube and the others all low-key hate ad revenue models. That's incredibly fickle revenue and it tends to suddenly crash, anytime the economy slows a bit, whilst the running costs stay up. Subscribers are more loyal.

And the ad revenue sources are often highly political and hit you with one boycott and shitstorm, after another. It's a never-ending nightmare. That's why stock prices for these companies only really get a big bump when they gain subscribers and contracts, not ad revenue.

Because ad revenue is tightly-clustered. It's not ad revenue from millions of different accounts; its one big ad agency and it can terrorize your company by pulling all ads at once.

Which could be avoided by not relying on ads. But that clearly isn't possible from the numbers I've seen. I don't see Nostr changing that as a technical solution. It'll require a shift in culture and user expectations. It's already technically possible on Nostr as far as I can tell. And yet the masses aren't pouring in. There's more to it than technology.

da

Rand 8mo ago

IT IZ Early/E*/*ya #painwillpush

Well, we don't have any critical mass, yet. 10% subscribers is more than enough to carry a freemium video model, but 10% of what number?

If you think of what our gitserver costs, you'd probably need a few dozen high-paying subscribers, to get a video hosting service up and running, which means you need thousands of regular users. Until then, someone needs to just bleed the cash.

A lot of Nostr is already headed that way.

Everyone can use Nostr.Build, but if you want to organize your media or upload full videos and use their AI and etc., then you pay.

(Yes, I pay, it's a good service.)

Everyone can read from wss://some.relay.com, but only paid users can write Kind 01, so anyone looking at the relay feed directly only sees their stuff. And everyone can use the search bar, but the quality of the search results goes way way up, if you pay, as there's an intelligent search machine kicking into gear on the server.

The people who don't pay don't even realize that there's any difference. You can just see them whining in the comments about spam, or not being able to upload a movie, and asking people, if they know how to find some note and etc.

(Laughs in subscriber.)

inpc 8mo ago

I agree it’s a cultural issue. People have grown up with the idea of a ‘free’ internet. On a personal level, I try to avoid companies that work on that basis and would rather pay smaller entities for services but I’m also of limited means and contradict myself fairly regularly.

How bad would ads need to get before people voted with their feet? It’s already this bad…. Hmmm.

Well, they were bad enough that I decided to pay ~$15 per month. But I also use YT a lot. I did the math and it was literally more expensive to spend time watching ads vs my income. I save money by paying for Premium. Either way, they annoy me. I would be willing regardless.

I get that I could block the ads, but I view that as theft now. I don't want to be a thief and don't want to sell my inner peace and soul for any fee, Certainly not such a low one (for me).

inpc 8mo ago

Pretty cool you worked it out from that perspective. My current thinking is that if something is costing me time, is it worth my time? Which leads to a lot of unread videos and articles.

There’s a lot of friction in today’s internet… it’s going to take some monumental events to change the current trajectory.

Yeah, that's one of my primary points. It isn't as simple as people on Nostr like to make it sometimes. Funding is probably THE issue for a YT displacement and I can't figure out where it would come from.

Exactly. I typically use money to buy time. I may waste that time fucking off on YT, but I made that decision for myself.

Same. I weigh my time very high because I put it to good use.

That's why I, for instance, go to the local butcher with trained personnel, so I can just walk in and they're like, "Ah, Mrs. Laeserin, good morning, I've already put some stuff to the side for you. Look at this lovely pork loin and one of our suppliers is taking orders for duck..."

Everyone else spends 30 minutes pouring over ALDI fliers and driving to three different stores to save 10¢ on ham.

Just give me the loin, thanks. Here's a €5 tip for your troubles, see you next week. I got shit to do.

Nah, just takes the dollar losing purchasing power and interest rates going up and people retiring and liquidating their 401(k), so that companies need to finally break even, to keep their stock price up, rather than taking on more and more debt.

Can already see it moving that way. Get more and more notices from freemium services that they're going to start purging unpaid content and etc. Data centers are not free and shareholders want to finally see some dividends or they're going to sell and buy Bitcoin. 😂

inpc 8mo ago

I have no idea about these things to be honest, I absorb a fair amount of information but I don't do the work to verify. I instead amuse myself by making funny noises for cash.

They just put more effort into avoiding the ads, rather than paying. Inconvenience is the price you pay to avoid ads, basically.

Nothing is for free. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Kevin's Bacon 8mo ago

I really don't understand people who don't like decently not terrible ads. I love them. Fuck yeah lemme get shit for free.

I think you are right as things are today on a broken money system but as bitcoin fixes things and people's purchasing power grows over time rather than being stolen, value for value models will become the norm.

The question is: Who is the person paying for value? It's only a subset. We can see that with zaps.

The value for value model leaves the disparity in place; it's just less overt.

What V4V also does is make it more obvious that it's services that need to be paid for, even more than content.

Lots of people will upload a video of themselves playing guitar, or an essay they've written, even if nobody pays them to, as they get something emotional out of the interchange and they can leverage the attention into a concert, book signing, or something.

But the person running the infrastructure just has that and it needs to be paid for, or he'll eventually stop or reduce the quality of the service, or use his control of the market for some third purpose.

Very true, most normies are so used to getting their services for free they don't even care it's at the cost of their souls.

They have inadvertently become slaves to these "free" platforms and drive their growth by being food for the algorithm. Google and X I'm looking at you.

There was a great clip of nostr:nprofile1qyxhwumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmvqyehwumn8ghj7mnhvvh8qunfd4skctnwv46z7ctewe4xcetfd3khsvrpdsmk5vnsw96rydr3v4jrz73hvyu8xqpqsg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjsfl8f237lmu63q8dzj6n doing the rounds a while back where he described it perfectly.

Most people don't actually mind being slaves. Our growth potential is the 5% or so, of the population, that actually minds. That's still a whole lot of people. 12.5 million adults, just within the US.

The percentage is probably much lower, outside of the USA, but 0.5% of 8 billion people is 40 million people.

The math checks out. Even capturing a tenth of that market, and getting a tenth of those people to subscribe or zap, is enough to sustain the effort, since Nostr running costs are unusually light, through the wide distribution.

The only projects that will struggle are the ones with oversized budgets, as they'll be expected to offer a return on the investment in the medium term, and they'll need a gigantic market for that, as margins are so thin.

Those sheep will follow once the new paradigm sets in and the current one is totally unsustainable.

My thinking here is that once you have a truly free market enabled by bitcoin, we will have an abundance of the things we need and that unlocks the v4v model.

Currently everyone is working stupid hours and scraping their money together so the idea of giving someone money for something they put out for free seems absurd.

Maybe. But this place is full of mega-rich Bitcoiners and most of the biggest zappers, subscribers, volunteers, and donors, are relatively poor people. The broad middle class usually ends up paying for everything, in the end. Even the funds are eventually just spending their contributions, as the big donations start to run out.

The plus side is that the middle class is the one with the least slave-mentality, so we'll tend to have a disproportionate amount of them on here.

pietre 8mo ago

Or you can just use brave, win-win

Silberengel 8mo ago

Somebody had to build that thing you use to avoid the ads. This just shifted the burden onto someone else, who has a different profit model (and, remember, not all profit is monetary), and now you had to switch browser vendors.

A win-win for whom?

The people paying to run YouTube?

The content creators?

Who wins?

This also isn't my point.

Google is evil and ads are annoying, so blocking the ads is the way to go for me

So evil that you still use their products?

I don't agree with Google on much, and I use few of their products. But I'm also able to identify that they aren't pure evil.

But this wasn't even my point. I'm not talking to thieves and leeches here. I'm talking to those who are willing to pay for services, even if they aren't perfect. Or at least those who simply don't use them if it's that bad.

Google doesn't make the content of the videos.

What do you mean about thieves and leeches?

Google funds the entire network the videos are on. Did you think those resources are free? You aren't just taking content. You're taking bandwidth, server resources, and developer labor. And I'll even ignore the fact that you're also robbing content creators of money that comes from ads if they have them.

Someone still has to pay for the resources you're leeching by not allowing ads or paying Premium. Those costs get passed on to everyone else.

There's no such thing as free. Whether it's on Nostr or some other network. Someone pays. If it isn't you, it's someone else.

I use some "free" relays on Nostr. There's nothing wrong with that. We aren't bypassing a funding mechanism. Still, someone is paying for it. I've paid for other relays that ask. The point is that theft isn't helping.

If a website asks me to disable my ad block to fund the content, I either pay if there's an option (there rarely is, and hopefully zapping will fix this someday) or open the page in a private window so they can show their ads. My last option is to simply not use their resources. Otherwise, it's theft in my opinion.

So you are indeed accusing people that block google ads as thieves and leeches 😀.

I am not talking about any website or nostr or whatever. I am talking about google and its aggressive policies that steel data without consent etc . If someone can be called a thief and leeche that is google (and you support it).

Yes, if you continue to use their network resources. I am stating that clearly. The rest of us, including creators, are paying your way. I'm not sure what else to call it but leeching.

I would be more forgiving if you paid for Premium while using some other client (or various blockers) if you want to. At least you're paying, even if YT doesn't like that.

I would bleed them dry, google and other leeches, if i could.

Neigsendoig Cocules 8mo ago

You have a worse experience when you pay for YT Premium, simply because they DRM YouTube now.

Use Invidious. That will solve it.

That's obviously untrue if I keep happily paying for it. I'm not going to solve anything with theft and leeching. I just won't use their service at all if it gets to that point.

MAHDOOD 8mo ago

It’s only predatory because people don’t understand what the tradeoffs are. On nostr, people will have to decide for themselves how they want to monetize content. They could hide it behind a paywall. They could count on the generosity of others zapping. They could put ads in the content themselves. There is more freedom so more ways to monetize.

I agree Nostr is better. But that isn't entirely my point. My issue is with the idea that YT is to blame for a cultural expectation of users. Ads can definitely be ethical. Companies have proven that. I don't agree with how YT does it. I'm just saying that numbers I see don't support dropping ads as a model on YT. They'd go broke. I would love to see context based ads replace the current model though. But that doesn't bring in as much money, which has to be addressed somehow.

MAHDOOD 8mo ago

I think the reality is that most content on YouTube isn’t really valuable. If you had to pay for each view of a video, people would be more selective. Views would come down drastically. People would be incentivized to create more valuable content than trendy viral brainrot shit. That’s my opinion. It’ll work itself out.

Lucas M 8mo ago

I agree