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204 points pabs3 | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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koch ◴[] No.44091430[source]
What I don't quite understand is why we haven't merely come to the conclusion that, like everything else, the internet costs money. Running servers and services costs money, and by giving it away for "free" from the get-go encases certain types of problems in the platform itself. I'm not talking about paying your ISP, I'm talking about accessing websites.

I guess what I'm getting at is that there is no cost to making a request over the internet. Why not? Why doesn't every http request have a corresponding price associated with it? You can access the resource if you pay. I imagine this would be a minuscule amount ($0.00001 or less per request). Then, instead of trying to solve for monetizing eyeballs or personal data, these problems are solved with economics.

replies(2): >>44091468 #>>44091507 #
LegionMammal978 ◴[] No.44091468[source]
From TFA:

> If a spammer needs to spend 0.0001 € in power to access the site only to gain a marginal profit of 0.00005 €, they are losing money with every site access. However, if a ticket scalper needs to spend 0.0001 € in power to buy a ticket that they will later sell at a 200 € profit, this will not stop them.

replies(1): >>44091583 #
1. tptacek ◴[] No.44091583[source]
And, long before the proof-of-work thing was popularized, people were already farming out high-margin captcha solves to cube farms full of people in Asia.