FediPay: beating Mata at marketing micropayments with free software

With regards to more general considerations, beyond the technical aspects, I think we should have thorough discussion on socio-cultural impacts of introducing (micro)payment to the fedi, find pros and cons and anticipate externalities.
For instance @how mentioned in another thread taking example from WeChat Pay. While as a payment system it may work perfectly, WeChat has also been named in the past in experiments where financial credit scoring and social credit systems are combined. According to this MIT report much of the dystopic stories spread in the West about “China’s Social Credit System” aren’t based on actual fact, but the article also does not make me feel very comfortable for the future. In China it is local governments and commercial entities doing experiments (for the latter think e.g. TikTok Lite).
To me at this stage it seems unavoidable we see a corporate takeover of the Fediverse. On one hand introducing micropayment at protocol level will empower these corporations to roll out their commercial services faster. OTOH not introducing micropayments will likely mean that some commercial enterprise will take the reign in defining how this shall work. And then we have an opportunity lost for the commons to stay in control there, at least for a while.

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