I’ll agree that browser support wouldn’t be required, but I’ve got a feeling that browser support would reduce the friction past some threshold and make this “enabled by default”. The number of people with a Stripe login is strictly less than the number of people with a browser, so requiring a Stripe login would be some amount of extra friction. These feelings are weakly held though.
But if I spend money on a single article and then it’s uninteresting, it feels like I wasted money
I feel like this might end up being a good thing. If you consider a subscription as a low-frequency high-risk high-reward bet (you could lose the value of the subscription, or gain the value of multiple articles), and many one-off payments as high-quantity low-risk low-reward bets (at worst you lose the value of one article, at best you gain the value of one article), then having multiple bets will give you more information about the underlying distribution. Practically, I imagine that I’d discover whether or not I like a publication faster if I can purchase a couple of low-risk articles rather than having to spend the full subscription fee.
You certainly can spend money on an article and later regret it, but this argument applies equally to subscriptions. Except with subscriptions, you’ve wasted significantly more money.
This would feel particularly bad if I get charged automatically as soon as I click a link
Agreed, having read your case I now think automatic charging should be off-by-default, so you only enable it for websites you’ve got high confidence in. Note the parallel with subscriptions essentially being on-by-default.
I’ll agree that browser support wouldn’t be required, but I’ve got a feeling that browser support would reduce the friction past some threshold and make this “enabled by default”. The number of people with a Stripe login is strictly less than the number of people with a browser, so requiring a Stripe login would be some amount of extra friction. These feelings are weakly held though.
I feel like this might end up being a good thing. If you consider a subscription as a low-frequency high-risk high-reward bet (you could lose the value of the subscription, or gain the value of multiple articles), and many one-off payments as high-quantity low-risk low-reward bets (at worst you lose the value of one article, at best you gain the value of one article), then having multiple bets will give you more information about the underlying distribution. Practically, I imagine that I’d discover whether or not I like a publication faster if I can purchase a couple of low-risk articles rather than having to spend the full subscription fee.
You certainly can spend money on an article and later regret it, but this argument applies equally to subscriptions. Except with subscriptions, you’ve wasted significantly more money.
Agreed, having read your case I now think automatic charging should be off-by-default, so you only enable it for websites you’ve got high confidence in. Note the parallel with subscriptions essentially being on-by-default.