The grossly perverted incentives of the ad-driven web aside, is what people read today less subject to bias? People choose, for example, to read/watch the NY Times vs WSJ, Politico vs Drudge Report, or MSNBC vs Fox News based on which publications line up with their biases.
If I don't get to decide whether my reading choices are due to my biases or my ability to discern quality or truth, who does? You? Google? Huff Post? HN's ranking algorithm X the aggregate mindset of HN readers? None of these are biased?
People voting with their wallets is the bedrock of the free market, which despite its shortcomings is vastly better than an economy driven by clicks and the manipukation thereof, and driven by advertisers and their agendas.
I come across some well done (by some objective measure: good references, background checks), long form investigative piece. It seems interesting, so I read it, but then find that it clashes with some deeply held belief of mine. I decide at that point that I want my money back, because whatever it is I read made me uncomfortable, or I just didn't like it. What this ends up incentivizing is journalism that merely echoes the beliefs of your target demographic, dressed in beautiful language.
My problem is with the money back feature, not the entire idea of it. I think some other measure of engagement e.g. how much time one spends on an article, whether one keeps going back to a particular passage over and over, should be what determines if the publisher gets paid. Not whether the reader "likes" it.
[0] https://medium.com/on-blendle/blendle-a-radical-experiment-w...
People tend to downvote if they don't care to reply. Me personally, I upvote most people that reply to me even if I disagree as I feel we should encourage discussion and alternate opinions.
You sign up, and only pay for what you read. Articles cost €0,30 on average, with smaller news-type articles being cheaper than longreads (interviews, opinion pieces, backstory articles).
On signup you get €2,50 for free, and then another €2,50 when you topup your wallet the first time.
Regarding signing up the publishers. This took a long time in The Netherlands, but getting an investment from The New York Times and Axel Springer certainly helped speed up the German launch.
Jean, I would love to hear your or Blendle's thoughs on my variation of a reader payment scheme: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8008960
https://blendle.com/kiosk/engels
Also, be sure to sign up at https://launch.blendle.com, we're working hard to get this across the Atlantic, stay tuned!
I've seen the phrase used to criticise lots of things, e.g.: SOPA/PIPA, mobile-hostile CSS, semantically incorrect HTTP codes.
We have a good privacy policy, here's the (loosely translated, this is not the official translation) first paragraph:
Blendle takes your privacy very seriously and will store and use your
information in a safe and secure way. Publishers have a tendency to demand that
we give them the email addresses of everyone who reads their articles, but we
refuse to give in to these requests. Also, we don't do ads, so we have no
incentive to collect data to sell you relevant ads.