Our Manifesto

Confessions of an Anti-Paywall Revolutionista. How being Hari Seldon can save us from Info Dark Ages

I’ve been working on Kachingle for several years now, and sometimes people ask me why I have persevered for so long.

It’s simple really.  I believe that creating a new social norm for “social payments” will save the world from the 21st century equivalent of the Dark Ages.

When I originally got the idea for Kachingle in May of 2003 I called it DonationPal.  At around that time I had another idea that I called SubscriptionPal. I noodled over both ideas for awhile, and then abruptly dropped SubscriptionPal – which was a metered networked paywall concept (some similarities to what the New York Times has announced), in favor of Kachingle.  Here’s why.

And now after 7 years have passed I am even more convinced that social payments – voluntary simple usage-based contributions – are the way to avoid a dark age of information.

When I was a kid I loved science fiction.  My favorite author was Isaac Asimov and I avidly read the Foundation Trilogy.  Remember how the goal was to save the universe from going into a long period of hell after the downfall of the Galactic Empire?  And how the protagonists struggled to accomplish this?  We are in the same scenario now, and each of us can be Hari Seldon.

The internet has provided us with the incredible opportunity to make information available to everyone,

but at the same time it has destroyed existing business models.  Restoring those old business models in the form of paywalls is a regression, a destruction of this fabulous opportunity, a step into the dark ages of non-information where people and the world will suffer.  And worse, it won’t be successful.  So the suffering will be for naught.

But what if the world community, led by journalists and bloggers, embraced another business model  ̶ social payments  ̶  that leaves information free for those who cannot or will not pay, and asks responsible people to pay their fair share of this public commons?  If everyone who can simply pays $5/month (or more if desired) to support the online content and services that they believe are important, social payments, along with advertising, could easily fund valuable information and services even if freeloaders and those that cannot pay still tag along.

If not, the dark ages of information are upon us, where sites like the Huffington Post (who told me they have no intention of ever paying their 4,000 bloggers) survive only because they have a business model that rewards only them and not their writers, and great news organizations like the NYTimes, the Washington Post, The LATimes, Der Spiegel, and The Guardian wither and die.  And many people become information-deprived  ̶  which in this century is as serious as being deprived of the basic necessities of life  ̶  because they cannot afford hundreds of subscription fees.

Please join me and the rest of the Kachingle team in making social payments a reality.

Cynthia

Founder, Kachingle
@kachingle & @typaldos
cynthia@kachingle.com