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Unless you actually manage to affect the behavior of other people by highlighting what Reddit is doing. However, often people complain and do nothing, or compl

Unless you actually manage to affect the behavior of other people by highlighting what Reddit is doing. However, often people complain and do nothing, or complain and keep buying the company's product. (e.g. games with microtransactions)

isostatic 8y ago
How do other people using games with microtransactions, or using reddit, or watching TV with adverts, harm me?
- abc-xyz 8y ago
  They harm you by making this kind of behavior acceptable. You may not care about X (who might be spamming people to download an app even thought you've rejected over a hundred times), but suddenly Y (that you love) sees how successful X has become doing this sort of behavior and begin to engage in the same behavior because there's little to no backlash in doing so. This is especially a problem when it comes to privacy because the average person doesn't understand the current and future dangers of the information being collected, and you're often forced to use these evil services because that's where everybody else is.
- pasquinelli 8y ago
  how does opening a thread to gripe about those things harm anyone? but if it persuades enough people, they could collectively have the influence to make it better.
- prepend 8y ago
  This is a good question and I used to have this opinion. Then I noticed how I didn’t really like video games that much and that they largely all had microtransactions. Sure there are a few, but creatives are limited and if the are making a game, they choose between designing for $50 for a complete experience or for $13/month for the rest of your life. These affect gameplay drastically. So people liking microtransactions mean these games make more money, so they are made, so stories are worse, so my game play is affected. I loved Mass Effect 1. The mind set of “why would I care if multiplayer charges for stuff?” led to the franchise sucking. And while there are other games to play, none as good as Mass Effect exist.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Among other things: they tend to dry up the options for other forms of content provision (or creator payment), such that they're the only game in town. It's a Gresham's Law dynamic that's been observed at least as far back as the 1950s, see Dwight McDonald, "A Theory of Mass Culture", H.L. Mencken, "Bayard v. Lionheart", or Ben Bagdikian's The Media Monopoly. There's also the wee slight problem that subversion of mass media by populist, demagogic, and/or fascist political movements is a distinct historical trend. See Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy, Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, or much of Hannah Arendt's work. This theme is also hit on by MacDonald, below. https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2008/ESB032/um/5136660/MacDonald_-_A_Theory_of_Mass_Culture.pdf https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2008/ESB032/um/5136660/MacDon... https://amomai.blogspot.com/2008/10/hl-mencken-bayard-vs-lionheart.html https://amomai.blogspot.com/2008/10/hl-mencken-bayard-vs-lio... https://www.worldcat.org/title/media-monopoly/oclc/249189781&referer=brief_results https://www.worldcat.org/title/media-monopoly/oclc/249189781... https://www.worldcat.org/title/gutenberg-galaxy-the-making-of-typographic-man/oclc/1002305448 https://www.worldcat.org/title/gutenberg-galaxy-the-making-o... https://www.worldcat.org/title/printing-press-as-an-agent-of-change-communications-and-cultural-transformations-in-early-modern-europe-volumes-i-and-ii/oclc/857276723 https://www.worldcat.org/title/printing-press-as-an-agent-of... http://www.openculture.com/2017/01/hannah-arendt-explains-how-propaganda-uses-lies-to-erode-all-truth-morality.html http://www.openculture.com/2017/01/hannah-arendt-explains-ho...

isostatic 8y ago

How do other people using games with microtransactions, or using reddit, or watching TV with adverts, harm me?

abc-xyz 8y ago
They harm you by making this kind of behavior acceptable. You may not care about X (who might be spamming people to download an app even thought you've rejected over a hundred times), but suddenly Y (that you love) sees how successful X has become doing this sort of behavior and begin to engage in the same behavior because there's little to no backlash in doing so. This is especially a problem when it comes to privacy because the average person doesn't understand the current and future dangers of the information being collected, and you're often forced to use these evil services because that's where everybody else is.
pasquinelli 8y ago
how does opening a thread to gripe about those things harm anyone? but if it persuades enough people, they could collectively have the influence to make it better.
prepend 8y ago
This is a good question and I used to have this opinion. Then I noticed how I didn’t really like video games that much and that they largely all had microtransactions. Sure there are a few, but creatives are limited and if the are making a game, they choose between designing for $50 for a complete experience or for $13/month for the rest of your life. These affect gameplay drastically. So people liking microtransactions mean these games make more money, so they are made, so stories are worse, so my game play is affected. I loved Mass Effect 1. The mind set of “why would I care if multiplayer charges for stuff?” led to the franchise sucking. And while there are other games to play, none as good as Mass Effect exist.
dredmorbius 8y ago
Among other things: they tend to dry up the options for other forms of content provision (or creator payment), such that they're the only game in town. It's a Gresham's Law dynamic that's been observed at least as far back as the 1950s, see Dwight McDonald, "A Theory of Mass Culture", H.L. Mencken, "Bayard v. Lionheart", or Ben Bagdikian's The Media Monopoly. There's also the wee slight problem that subversion of mass media by populist, demagogic, and/or fascist political movements is a distinct historical trend. See Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy, Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, or much of Hannah Arendt's work. This theme is also hit on by MacDonald, below. https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2008/ESB032/um/5136660/MacDonald_-_A_Theory_of_Mass_Culture.pdf https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2008/ESB032/um/5136660/MacDon... https://amomai.blogspot.com/2008/10/hl-mencken-bayard-vs-lionheart.html https://amomai.blogspot.com/2008/10/hl-mencken-bayard-vs-lio... https://www.worldcat.org/title/media-monopoly/oclc/249189781&referer=brief_results https://www.worldcat.org/title/media-monopoly/oclc/249189781... https://www.worldcat.org/title/gutenberg-galaxy-the-making-of-typographic-man/oclc/1002305448 https://www.worldcat.org/title/gutenberg-galaxy-the-making-o... https://www.worldcat.org/title/printing-press-as-an-agent-of-change-communications-and-cultural-transformations-in-early-modern-europe-volumes-i-and-ii/oclc/857276723 https://www.worldcat.org/title/printing-press-as-an-agent-of... http://www.openculture.com/2017/01/hannah-arendt-explains-how-propaganda-uses-lies-to-erode-all-truth-morality.html http://www.openculture.com/2017/01/hannah-arendt-explains-ho...