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Why does it matter how much I like a service? Also, not everyone has enough money to pay for a service, the rest of 7B people of the world isn't as rich as hac

Why does it matter how much I like a service? Also, not everyone has enough money to pay for a service, the rest of 7B people of the world isn't as rich as hacker news readers.

sp332 9y ago
Sure, a sponsorship or freemium model would cover that though. After all if the users don't have that much money to begin with, advertisers are already wasting their money. And if you don't care about a service, why care if it goes away?
- ucaetano 9y ago
  > Sure, a sponsorship or freemium model would cover that though. No, it wouldn't. It would only cover a small fraction of creators, and definitely not enough with money. Your attention is worth far more than the cost of the content/service to the advertisers. And the service is worth to you far more than your attention. It is a trade where value is generated to both sides: you provide your attention, which is worth almost nothing to you, and receive a service in return. > And if you don't care about a service, why care if it goes away? Caring and liking are different. I hate my ISP, but it would be even worse if it went away.
  - sp332 9y ago
    Your attention is only valuable to advertisers to the extent that you might buy something. If you can't afford what they're selling, your attention is not worth anything to them. The whole online advertising industry is propped up by a few % of people who click ads. That's how I know that a relatively few people can keep it all afloat.
    - ucaetano 9y ago
      > That's how I know that a relatively few people can keep it all afloat. No, clicking on those ads doesn't cost anything for those few people. Now they'd actually have to pay for the content, and subsidize everyone else, which wouldn't happen, they'd just move to a paywalled model. Ads generate cross-subsidization, subscriptions generate pay-walling.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
pjmlp 9y ago
They pay for other stuff in life, why should online services be any different? It is like some devs that contrary to other professionals, don't want to pay for their tools.
- ucaetano 9y ago
  Because they aren't as rich as you and can't afford paying for everything with cash, but would be happy to pay with their attention.
  - rosser 9y ago
    They aren't just paying "with their attention" — but also with having all of their behavior, across the entire web, recorded, tracked, and modeled by folks with demonstrably unclean hands, whose incentives are aligned against them. That is a categorically different bargain than merely having something that competes with the content for their attention. Just because the viewer may be ignorant of it doesn't mean they aren't (implicitly) making it.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    I am not rich and also cannot afford to pay everything I would like to have, neither everything that is free is worth my attention.
  - hueving 9y ago
    Advertisers don't want the attention of people that can't pay for things. People rich enough to pay for things are essentially subsidizing everyone else in the ad model with an irritating ad middleman. Subsidizing is fine, but let's be explicit about it with a library instead and avoid these gross privacy invasions.

Why does it matter how much I like a service? Also, not everyone has enough money to pay for a service, the rest of 7B people of the world isn't as rich as hacker news readers.

sp332 9y ago

Sure, a sponsorship or freemium model would cover that though. After all if the users don't have that much money to begin with, advertisers are already wasting their money. And if you don't care about a service, why care if it goes away?

ucaetano 9y ago
> Sure, a sponsorship or freemium model would cover that though. No, it wouldn't. It would only cover a small fraction of creators, and definitely not enough with money. Your attention is worth far more than the cost of the content/service to the advertisers. And the service is worth to you far more than your attention. It is a trade where value is generated to both sides: you provide your attention, which is worth almost nothing to you, and receive a service in return. > And if you don't care about a service, why care if it goes away? Caring and liking are different. I hate my ISP, but it would be even worse if it went away.
- sp332 9y ago
  Your attention is only valuable to advertisers to the extent that you might buy something. If you can't afford what they're selling, your attention is not worth anything to them. The whole online advertising industry is propped up by a few % of people who click ads. That's how I know that a relatively few people can keep it all afloat.
  - ucaetano 9y ago
    > That's how I know that a relatively few people can keep it all afloat. No, clicking on those ads doesn't cost anything for those few people. Now they'd actually have to pay for the content, and subsidize everyone else, which wouldn't happen, they'd just move to a paywalled model. Ads generate cross-subsidization, subscriptions generate pay-walling.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]

pjmlp 9y ago

They pay for other stuff in life, why should online services be any different? It is like some devs that contrary to other professionals, don't want to pay for their tools.

ucaetano 9y ago
Because they aren't as rich as you and can't afford paying for everything with cash, but would be happy to pay with their attention.
- rosser 9y ago
  They aren't just paying "with their attention" — but also with having all of their behavior, across the entire web, recorded, tracked, and modeled by folks with demonstrably unclean hands, whose incentives are aligned against them. That is a categorically different bargain than merely having something that competes with the content for their attention. Just because the viewer may be ignorant of it doesn't mean they aren't (implicitly) making it.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  I am not rich and also cannot afford to pay everything I would like to have, neither everything that is free is worth my attention.
- hueving 9y ago
  Advertisers don't want the attention of people that can't pay for things. People rich enough to pay for things are essentially subsidizing everyone else in the ad model with an irritating ad middleman. Subsidizing is fine, but let's be explicit about it with a library instead and avoid these gross privacy invasions.