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This describes an increasingly common practice among online businesses -- aggressively monetize visitors, turn them into clients and corporate assets. When you
by lutusp 10y ago
This describes an increasingly common practice among online businesses -- aggressively monetize visitors, turn them into clients and corporate assets.
When you visit a typical modern website, within 15 seconds an overlay appears encouraging you to sign up, give away your email address, and become part of what's really happening.
In a hypothetical parallel universe where telling the truth is mandatory, you would visit a website and ask, "So, what are you selling, what is your product?" The website will be forced to reply, "You."
All this apart from the present state of the scientific-technical publishing business (also discussed in the linked article), which uses different methods to obtain the same result: monetize people's wish to communicate with each other.
- AnOscelot 10y agoI wish the sites with the annoying "give us your email now!" popups would be honest. Just say, in plain language: "You can support this site by giving us an email, which we will then add to a list we can sell to various entities. You don't have to give us your main email address. Just please use something other than mailinator (and their ilk) so it's an saleable address. This will help us stay open despite most of our visitors blocking our ads. We will send you a newsletter occasionally so we can pretend this exchange is not purely about money. Thank you."