<story><title>Underestimating the power of Jeff Bezos</title><url>https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-significantly-underestimated-power-jeff-bezos-franklin-foer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hectorr1</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re right - journalism has a broken and outdated business model. Amazon has a modern and effective one. To fix the problem, you need to fix this dynamic.&lt;p&gt;I get a lot the crypto hate you see around here, there are some real problems in the space right now. But facilitating micropayments for online content is extremely low hanging fruit with the tech, especially if the US tax exemption for txs under $600 goes through and browser integration happens.&lt;p&gt;Brave Browser &amp;#x2F; Basic Attention Token is one of the few groups in ICO-mania-land that is trying to solve a real problem, and they&amp;#x27;re focused on this one. It&amp;#x27;s led by Brendan Eich, former Mozilla CEO and original Netscape dev. Worth checking out if you are in publishing.</text></item><item><author>michaelt</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  It was at that awkward moment that Amazon decided that it
  would punish the New Republic. Our ad sales department
  received a note, informing us that Amazon would be yanking
  its advertising for its new political comedy, Alpha House.
  The missive left nothing to the imagination. “In light of
  the cover article about Amazon, Amazon has decided to
  terminate the Alpha House campaign currently running on
  the New Republic. Please confirm receipt of this email and
  that the campaign has been terminated.” It was signed,
  “Team Amazon.”
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
This is one of the reasons I really wish there was a decent, widely supported micropayment system for journalism.&lt;p&gt;So long as journalists&amp;#x27; jobs depend on the ad money coming in, companies can use that leverage to get negative stories spiked. Amazon is one example in this article; HSBC with The Telegraph (and other newspapers) is another [1].&lt;p&gt;If we want to avoid this disease spreading, we really need some way to pay journalists that doesn&amp;#x27;t rely on corporate largess.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;media&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;feb&amp;#x2F;17&amp;#x2F;peter-oborne-telegraph-hsbc-coverage-fraud-readers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;media&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;feb&amp;#x2F;17&amp;#x2F;peter-oborne-t...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>root_axis</author><text>The problem with crypto as a solution is that there isn&amp;#x27;t much money to be made from the pool of crypto users, they are a small niche and notoriously low spenders (a fact that anyone who has accepted bitcoin payments for legal products&amp;#x2F;services can attest to). Of course, more money is better than less money, however we&amp;#x27;re talking about a drop in the bucket, not a real solution for publishers. Finally, there&amp;#x27;s also a strong political ideology that tracks pretty well with crypto-users that would make it additionally prohibitive for many flavors of journalism.</text></comment>
<story><title>Underestimating the power of Jeff Bezos</title><url>https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-significantly-underestimated-power-jeff-bezos-franklin-foer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hectorr1</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re right - journalism has a broken and outdated business model. Amazon has a modern and effective one. To fix the problem, you need to fix this dynamic.&lt;p&gt;I get a lot the crypto hate you see around here, there are some real problems in the space right now. But facilitating micropayments for online content is extremely low hanging fruit with the tech, especially if the US tax exemption for txs under $600 goes through and browser integration happens.&lt;p&gt;Brave Browser &amp;#x2F; Basic Attention Token is one of the few groups in ICO-mania-land that is trying to solve a real problem, and they&amp;#x27;re focused on this one. It&amp;#x27;s led by Brendan Eich, former Mozilla CEO and original Netscape dev. Worth checking out if you are in publishing.</text></item><item><author>michaelt</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  It was at that awkward moment that Amazon decided that it
  would punish the New Republic. Our ad sales department
  received a note, informing us that Amazon would be yanking
  its advertising for its new political comedy, Alpha House.
  The missive left nothing to the imagination. “In light of
  the cover article about Amazon, Amazon has decided to
  terminate the Alpha House campaign currently running on
  the New Republic. Please confirm receipt of this email and
  that the campaign has been terminated.” It was signed,
  “Team Amazon.”
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
This is one of the reasons I really wish there was a decent, widely supported micropayment system for journalism.&lt;p&gt;So long as journalists&amp;#x27; jobs depend on the ad money coming in, companies can use that leverage to get negative stories spiked. Amazon is one example in this article; HSBC with The Telegraph (and other newspapers) is another [1].&lt;p&gt;If we want to avoid this disease spreading, we really need some way to pay journalists that doesn&amp;#x27;t rely on corporate largess.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;media&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;feb&amp;#x2F;17&amp;#x2F;peter-oborne-telegraph-hsbc-coverage-fraud-readers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;media&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;feb&amp;#x2F;17&amp;#x2F;peter-oborne-t...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bovermyer</author><text>Unfortunately, Brave is incompatible with the current business model of journalism, and I don&amp;#x27;t know if journalism can survive a war on multiple fronts - that is, a war on its pocketbook from the consumer side, and a war on its integrity from the government side.</text></comment>