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> However, what would be the economic incentive to provide such a service at Google- or Facebook-scale, free of charge (via up-front subscription fees, of cours
by Veratyr 10y ago
> However, what would be the economic incentive to provide such a service at Google- or Facebook-scale, free of charge (via up-front subscription fees, of course)?
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "free of charge (via up-front subscription fees, of course)" here. Do you mean an extra "free" feature on top of your paid subscription or do you mean a freemium model where everyone gets the feature but the free users are subsidized by the paid users? Or do you mean totally free?
In the first two cases, I'm afraid the answer is that the only economic incentive is people making purchasing decisions based on the feature being present. If there's no increase in demand, there's no economic reason to implement it. Unfortunately, aside from the HN crowd, not many people seem to care much about privacy.
In the last case, I think it's never going to happen. Nothing can live long without money and if your users aren't your customers, they have to be your product in order for you to survive.
> Is there a business model that is able to ignore the advertising and marketing value of your data, yet still provides enough value to fuel the growth that Google, Facebook, and others have experienced?
I think WhatsApp has demonstrated this no? It's been a paid subscription from the start and as far as I know, the data hasn't ever really been used for marketing or advertising. It's fully encrypted now too.
> Asked another way, would these cloud/social services still be able to exist as we know them if their providers were not allowed to collect and exploit this data?
In terms of collection, some services require access to this data. For example Google can't send you a notification telling you about your flight status if it can't read your email to get your flight confirmation. It also can't recommend videos on YouTube or pay creators without access to watch histories. I also doubt that more basic products like Google Search can work as well as they do without knowing which links you're clicking to tell them how good the results are.
In terms of exploitation, I think there's definitely an argument for users paying to, for example, not be advertised to or have their data withheld from marketing exchanges, however there's no demand for it.
- bigbugbag 10y ago>I think WhatsApp has demonstrated this no? It's been a paid subscription from the start and as far as I know, the data hasn't ever really been used for marketing or advertising. It's fully encrypted now too. No. It's been bought out by facebook Inc. in 2014. excerpt from whatsapp legal info: If you are an existing user, you can choose not to have your WhatsApp account information shared with Facebook to improve your Facebook ads and products experiences. Existing users who accept our updated Terms and Privacy Policy will have an additional 30 days to make this choice. But for new users, well tough luck ! Their encryption was criticized when it was shown that it is implemented in a way allowing whatsapp to replace the key transparently without notifying the user. Bonus excerpt from whatsapp legal info: As part of the Facebook family of companies, WhatsApp receives information from, and shares information with, this family of companies. We may use the information we receive from them, and they may use the information we share with them, to help operate, provide, improve, understand, customize, support, and market our Services and their offerings. (...) Facebook and the other companies in the Facebook family also may use information from us to improve your experiences within their services such as making product suggestions (for example, of friends or connections, or of interesting content) and showing relevant offers and ads.
- bigbugbag 10y ago> In terms of exploitation, I think there's definitely an argument for users paying to, for example, not be advertised to or have their data withheld from marketing exchanges, however there's no demand for it. Where do you get the idea that there is no demand for this ? It's a recurrent demand and it is consistently declined for business model reason by the facebook-like (see investor storytime[1]). Then there is a compelling argument that paying not to be advertised is only going to make you a more valuable target to be advertised to.[2] Likely paying for having your data withheld from marketing exchanges will increase the price of your data on the market while not providing you any way to be sure it has effectively been withheld. The only way is for this data not to be collected in the first place. [1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/advertising-is-the-internets-original-sin/376041/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/adver... [2]: http://zen.lk/2015/07/19/Why-you-will-never-escape-ads-by-paying-for-content/ http://zen.lk/2015/07/19/Why-you-will-never-escape-ads-by-pa...