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From an economic point of view, wasting people's time in exchange for a free service is worse than either charging them what the market can bear, or providing a
by underwoodley 9y ago
From an economic point of view, wasting people's time in exchange for a free service is worse than either charging them what the market can bear, or providing a free service. If you charged them, you would benefit. If you didn't charge, the users would benefit. But if you make a demand on their time which doesn't have any benefit for you, both of you are worse off.
- jchw 9y agoThis, to me, seems like a strange way of thinking. They're not 'wasting people's time,' they're making a request of them in exchange for a service. Instead of turning them away entirely as a full paywall may have, they got some information or at least amusement out of them, and the user still gets their service. Users benefit either way; the question is whether they have to pay in exchange for it or answer a question in exchange for it. The latter may seem wasteful to you, but clearly it didn't to the owners of that website.
- alphaalpha101 9y agoThey're wasting time in the same sense that bitcoin is wasting energy: maybe they're technically doing something, but it's still a waste. Bitcoin wastes a lot of energy. Does it technically get used? Sure, it does, it's used to verify transactions. Is that still a waste of energy? Yes, because there are way better things we could do with that energy, like verifying transactions using coins that aren't obsolete i.e. aren't bitcoin. Similarly, they're wasting the user's time here because while yes, the user is doing something by writing an apology, it's still much less valuable than what that user could be doing.
- gpvos 9y agoThey get quite a bit of product feedback, which is beneficial.