17 ms·

The media portrayal of the tech world would be more impactful if it weren't so hyperbolic, dramatized, and skewed. There are myriad valid complaints about the t

• sharemywin 9y ago
  They aren't free. You pay for them in high prices for good and services. Those companies pay advertising which increase prices plus their tech size profits. And because the stock market machine demands greater and greater profits they need larger stronger monopolies to generate those obscene profits.
  • fwdpropaganda 9y ago
    > They aren't free. You pay for them in high prices for good and services. Your reasoning is extremely fallacious because you're overlooking a lot of nuance. Yes, it is true that in aggregate part of the advertising costs get passed on to consumers. How much exactly depends on macroeconomic factors, industry dynamics, pricing power of distributors and retailers, and hundreds other variables. But you are right that in aggregate a non-zero amount of the advertising costs get passed on to consumers. However, advertising is valuable to advertisers because it works to some degree. And it works because people are influenced by it. Now, as an individual I have no control over what other people are doing and so I have no control over how valuable advertising is and how much is being spent on it and how much is being passed on to consumers. Therefore as an individual I look around me and prices are what they are and already have in them advertising costs which will not go up by me using service. Therefore as an individual the marginal cost of me using these services is effectively zero (imagine the ratio between the value of advertising to me and the aggregate value of advertising, that's effectively zero). As an individual those services are free. So it depends on what your definition of "free" is. A) Would prices be lower if advertising didn't exist? Yes [0]. B) Would prices be lower to me if I didn't use these services? No. The thing is that in definition A) I don't really have a choice, so it's irrelevant. I only have a choice as an individual. [0] And even here some people will disagree with you. What I call "free market fundamentalists" will argue that No, they wouldn't, because the advertising leads to higher sales and greater operational efficiency, so that advertising costs are exactly offset by lower per-unit costs.
    • eeZah7Ux 9y ago
      > But you are right that in aggregate a non-zero amount of the advertising costs get passed on to consumers. If a company's only source of revenue is customers, then, by definition, customers are paying for all of advertising. > As an individual those services are free. Perhaps those are free to you, personally. Yet, on a global scale the sum is zero. If a company spends $$$ on advertising I'll eventually pay a fraction of it, directly or indirectly.
      • fwdpropaganda 9y ago
        > > But you are right that in aggregate a non-zero amount of the advertising costs get passed on to consumers. > If a company's only source of revenue is customers, then, by definition, customers are paying for all of advertising. > > As an individual those services are free. > Perhaps those are free to you, personally. > Yet, on a global scale the sum is zero. If a company spends $$$ on advertising I'll eventually pay a fraction of it, directly or indirectly. So you just repeated my points, but worse. For example, it is not true that the customers are paying for all of the advertising. The way to determine what customers are paying for is to see how the world with advertiising compares with the world without advertising, and there's many possibilities. A) with advertising the company revenues are higher by the same amount on a per-unit basis (companies pass all cost to consumers), B) with advertising company costs are higher by the same amount on a per-unit basis (meaning the companies pass all cost to shareholders in the form of lower margins and lower return on equity, or related metric), C) something in between. So it's not true that necessarily customers are paying for all of the advertising.
        • pbalau 9y ago
          If we are speaking about a product that I have to pay for or a paid service, then I will end up paying a share of the R&D, maintenance, advertising. If we are speaking about a service provided at no cost to me and the provider makes money off advertising, then I will end up paying some share of that if and only if my access to said service is charged by a 3rd party, eg a phone company that charges me for traffic, vs my home connection which is a flat rate, regardless if I use it or not.
  • marcinzm 9y ago
    It's not like advertising didn't exist before the internet so blaming the tech giants solely for it's impact on society seems odd. They didn't create advertising, they simply took away advertising money from other mediums.
    • 908087 9y ago
      Advertising didn't previously involve putting society in a glass bubble of 24/7 surveillance and granular manipulation.
    • sharemywin 9y ago
      It's not the advertising per say, but the winner take all nature that's inherent in distribution that seems to be the problem.
    • ionised 9y ago
      Advertising before the internet and advertising now are two VERY different beasts.
  • dsacco 9y ago
    I think the parent commenter has a pretty straightforward point: the services are "free" in the common sense of the word, meaning you need not directly pay for them. You can reason about abstract value transfer relationships involving the concept of "free", but the core idea is that people are getting something in return for their money, and most people are observably okay with it. > You pay for them in high prices for good and services. Those companies pay advertising which increase prices plus their tech size profits. I don't think this is falsifiable. It sounds sort of feasible in the abstract, but how can we empirically measure that effect? As it stands, I could just as easily respond that, no, these companies make prices more efficient, because their advertising methodologies are more effective so companies spend less on their platforms than they would for equivalent ad campaigns elsewhere. Then we'd have to figure out how to investigate whether modern companies advertise more due to growth of the market, or because they have to due to catch up with everyone else using the tech advertising platforms. Narrowing down the answer, if there is one, would be nontrivial. Then I could also say that advertising makes tech services cheaper, because Facebook and Google earn more from user data than they would if they forced everyone to pay $20/month. Which of us is right? We can't really say, it's effectively an opinion because, even if technically falsifiable, these claims are far from being empirically demonstrable.
  • pbalau 9y ago
    Not sure I follow. You assert that a product will be designed to cost FOO, but then they decide to advertise and they increase the price to FOO + x. That's not how it works, the advertising costs are built in the original FOO, being presentations, conferences, regular ads, you name it. Companies use advertising to increase their sales, either from 0 to something or from something to something more. Along with R&D, production costs, running costs and profit, the advertising cost is part of the planning from the start.
  • s73v3r_ 9y ago
    Without advertising, most of these products would be unknown, and thus wouldn't get sold at all.
  • pathseeker 9y ago
    >And because the stock market machine demands greater and greater profits This is not how the stock market works. Where did you get this idea?
• avoutthere 9y ago
  > By other metrics, we are being victimized... Hyperbolic indeed.
• oldcynic 9y ago
  This is a conversation I have occasionally had with non tech friends. I'm sorry, you are the one being hyperbolic. It's like you haven't even noticed what's been happening the last 10 years or so. > You get those free, truly amazing services lol. Services that exist without an honest portrayal about what they do with the data they gather, or anything like clarity on the extent of what is possible. Not content with that, they bend the service to better manipulate us not to provide a better service. Facebook run fun psychological experiments to see if they can manipulate their users - without calling for volunteers first or anything I recognise as ethics. How many times have FB been pulled up for being, cough, "less than honest"? Google, especially, have built a reputation for simply gathering maximum possible data, then shuttering the product 18 months later. There is no reason a company Google's size need close Reader or Picasa or any number of others. Buy their in-home device or use G Drive? Hell no, i don't trust them to provide any availability once the data grab is complete. Sure if the company is entering leaner times you can understand canning some of their services, right now it's no more than a rounding error. So no, I'm in no rush to use any new Google offering - they don't exist long enough. I think as it currently stands (collect data on me, lie to me, track me around the web as far as technically possible, track me off the service as far as technically possible, track me offline as far as possible, sell retargeting and other dubious tactics to ensure my life is 101% a buying consumer experience with no time off. In return I get a service that doesn't even meet the core need any more thanks to engagement algorithms bending it to meet FB and Google need not users') is a pretty terrifying deal. Terrifying because we still think it's an honest exchange akin to swapping £1 for a bar of chocolate in a shop, just swap data for service. We still feel it's a fair exchange. Yeah, without honesty of even 10% of what is being done. I'd actually like the sort of exchange you imply. Give me a great service in exchange for some data. Actually, yes, that seems fair so long as you use it reasonably. Hoovering up everything, with the Hoover turned up to 11, whilst implying "it's just a bit of data" is a confidence trick on the non-technical.
  • sh33mp 9y ago
    >Facebook run fun psychological experiments to see if they can manipulate their users - without calling for volunteers first or anything I recognise as ethics. I've always wondered: How is that different from A/B testing, or any other marketing experiment?
• wybiral 9y ago
  For some services I agree with your sentiment. But we don't have metrics so there's no way to know if this is a fair deal. Remember, they're showing us ads in addition to collecting volumes of information on us, so we're paying in two ways. And frankly I don't mind the ads, by principle, but I do mind that a few companies are able to use them to track us nearly everywhere online without allowing me to review what they're collecting and who is collecting it. Here in the US, we cried tyranny when our security agencies were collecting metadata to monitor threats. And then we gave everything we had to Facebook and Google and didn't bat an eye as they sold us to anyone who pays.
  • pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    I think the problem is at a much higher level - why do companies have this motivation. It's because we've structured our society (in Western Democracies) so that people grow rich if they can trick you in to buying stuff. The better they are at tricking you, the more they earn. The higher the price compared to the cost, the more they earn. The lower the longevity of the goods, the more chance to sell to you again. Many of the incentives are towards fooling people rather than creating useful goods that enrich society with minimal environmental impact and maximum longevity. It's unsustainable and leads to powerful (ie rich) people who are incentivised to parasitically feed on poorer people.
    • wybiral 9y ago
      I think the problem is at a much lower level... This is the nature of competition and evolution. It's the natural progression of a game called "maximize the resources" where there are no rules against exploitation. Which is why I think we need more regulation in this particular area to clearly define the rules we want everyone to play by.
      • pbhjpbhj 9y ago
        What do you mean by "maximise resources", currently Western Capitalism is working towards wasting resources and externalising costs, and marginalising resources, that's going to break with massive environmental and social consequences.
• jonbarker 9y ago
  The problem is that the ads model works for a while, then they realize it doesn't anymore and they change the free tier. This seemed to have happened recently with gmail. Impossible to know what the eventual monetization model will be when signing up. I think this is the justified cause of the mistrust. Also there are the observations 'free as in beer' and 'if you're not the customer you're the product.' Both of which have merit.
• afpx 9y ago
  First, do you or anyone you know directly or indirectly profit from these types of services? Because I find your emphatic endorsement hard to understand. To be fair, I do use some of these services, too (carefully). But, that’s only because often I can’t find quality alternatives. For instance, I would pay for a high-quality service like Mint (I don’t use it) that kept my data private, but there is none. Since gathering / ad-selling services are so lucrative, they essentially subsidize the development of the highest-quality products in the market. The best engineers work for these companies. They have massive teams of people refining their products. And, these companies use IP laws to prevent clones. Essentially, they lock out for-fee competitors. Because of this, I’m a strong supporter of consumer protection laws and regulations. Capital often flows toward deceptive and unethical practices. And, all companies are eventually forced to follow the leader, otherwise they disappear. Laws are the only ways to prevent this.
  • agentdrtran 9y ago
    Try Tiller. It puts all of your data into a Google Sheet with nice premade templates. Not quite as nice UX as mint but pretty close and allows for better customization.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  • ryanmonroe 9y ago
    You start by saying the parent comment is hard to understand, then go on to explain why the statements are true. These two statements are essentially the same >Since gathering / ad-selling services are so lucrative, they essentially subsidize the development of the highest-quality products in the market. The best engineers work for these companies. They have massive teams of people refining their products. And, these companies use IP laws to prevent clones. Essentially, they lock out for-fee competitors. > You get those free, truly amazing services for nothing because the companies found ways to generate value from the data being gathered. The cost to maintain that infrastructure and provide those great services is pretty high and has taken some brilliant engineers years of sweat. The only real difference is your use of the phrase "lock-out", but I don't think that's a reasonable way to look at it. If enough people really want to be part of a fee-based ecosystem, no one is stopping a company from engaging those people. You bring up IP laws, but that's really an independent issue, since fee-based and ad-based businesses can both use IP laws in the same way.
• dalbasal 9y ago
  ...would it? IE, would we still be reading it. We keep crying out for better media but private, public, for profit or not... the popular/successful stuff is hyperbolic, dramatized, and skewed. IF we want it even half as bad as we say we do... where's all the calm & collected media? Genuine question, where is it & why isn't it here? ^Sorry, way off topic To the topic... this line of argument feels (I don't have much more to go an than feels) unsatisfying. Sweet or not, it's hard to see this as a deal, in any way but the most abstract. First, users' end of the deal is secretive, complicated and has hard to understand implications. Second, most of the benefits (to users and The Googles) and most of the dangers (to users and maybe society) are a product of aggregation, which complicates the concept of a deal even more. Also, these things tend to be monopolistic and data is more moat.
• camillomiller 9y ago
  You have no way to say if it's a fair deal, because we don't have proper metrics to check. Plus this data collection is instrumental to the increasing centralization of power and wealth that has the potential of getting to a dangerous extreme soon. I think we should act, and I'm proud that the EU is doing just that. Lanier's proposal might be a bit too much, but at least revising the tax scheme for companies that profit from everyone's data is a necessary step, in my opinion, in order to properly redistribute value to society.
• S-jet 9y ago
  The problem with all these free services is that we are short sighted. We will pay for all in a long term.
• s73v3r_ 9y ago
  And how does the idea that Facebook still collects massive amounts of data on me despite the fact that I don't use their service reconcile with all that? What do I get in exchange for all that data FB has?