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> I pay for the service so I don’t want to be the product. I think this is worth thinking about for a bit. The trope is that if you're not paying then you're t

> I pay for the service so I don’t want to be the product. I think this is worth thinking about for a bit. The trope is that if you're not paying then you're the product. But it doesn't follow that if you are paying you are not the product. That depends entirely on business decisions that customers have little visibility into. For any product you pay for, there may eventually be a decision to extract additional revenue streams by monetizing your data or attention. The fact that this happened with cable TV and advertising before the era of the internet indicates that this is far from a new pattern. I expect to see it a lot in the next few years.

api 7y ago
The trope is backwards. If a business doesn't charge they have no choice but to make the user the product. If the user pays they have the option.
- rock_hard 7y ago
  Not really though Look no further than TV manufacturers, the moment one of them decided to substitute below market prices with selling people’s data the others had to follow to stay competitive!
  - Silhouette 7y ago
    I still wonder how true this really is. Every time this subject comes up, all I seem to find are people who just want a good screen, and often who don't mind paying a higher price for it. Presumably there are also people who are sufficiently price-sensitive when buying a large flat-screen TV that the reduction from having bundled junkware makes a difference, but as far as I know, I have yet to meet one. If anything, by now I'd say "smart TV fatigue" is setting in, much the same as "smartphone fatigue" a little while ago. Enough people have had these devices for long enough to see all the a-bit-too-clever software get out of date and stop working, and then they start to see the bundled online services and so on as a negative and start asking their more techie friends and family for advice on how to avoid the problems next time.
    - rovr138 7y ago
      I wish I could buy a really good screen with no “smart” software at all. I can plug an Xbox if I want, or a shield, or a Roku, or an Amazon fire stick/tv, or an Apple TV, or a chrome cast Just add a bunch of ports and KISS. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle
      - Silhouette 7y ago
        The irony is that you can still buy just a good screen with good connectivity options and basic controls, but the market is advertised as "display screens" intended for things like advertising or video walls. I don't understand why the same manufacturers/distributors offering these products don't also pitch them as TVs with well-defined specs and no junk, probably with some sort of "expert"/"pro" branding that makes them look like a high-end choice. You could pitch one of those, a basic 2.1 home sound system or the like, and maybe a small control/switching box that everything plugs into and that also accepts your source feeds, and you've got a mini home-theatre-style arrangement that could be quite attractive to those who value decent gear but don't have the budget and/or space for a full home theatre setup that would cost at least 2-3x as much for entry-level equipment.
        jamiek88 7y ago
        Because only two manufacturers make large OLED screens and maybe three make advanced LED screens and they are all massive conglomerates that control the market.
        Silhouette 7y ago
        I suppose my implied question here is why control the market in that way even if they do have the practical ability to do so? If there is a market for simple, good quality products and people willing to pay a fair price for them, why would you exclude it, particularly in favour of a market where more of your revenue comes from dubious sources that could backfire in terms of PR and/or be less reliable in terms of future potential earnings?
noobermin 7y ago
This sort of thing cannot be remedied apart from regulation.
tripzilch 7y ago
As someone in another thread mentioned, it's because the marketing budgets are way bigger than what people would, or even could, pay. Whichever corporations are paying for these revenue streams of monetized data and attention, they can (and do) easily outbid whatever a human customer is willing or able to pay for software or services that don't track you. It's pretty obvious when you think about it. All the incentives for commercial software / services / sites anywhere are stacked against the user actually paying with money instead of data. There isn't even a good infrastructure for getting/passing this money, unlike the giant system of ad networks passing tracking data back and forth. People (complete idiots, IMHO) have been saying this is the transaction, you're paying with your data for the "free internet". But for starters, there is no choice. Also, nobody asked me. I've been "paying" with my data without consent for YEARS, even though I try not to. And now we see it's not an either/or question. They can just make you pay for the service AND extract your data and track you. Because why not both? Again we don't have a lot of choice.
- isostatic 7y ago
  > As someone in another thread mentioned, it's because the marketing budgets are way bigger than what people would, or even could, pay. This makes no sense. Someone paying £43 a month for Sky TV in the UK is only worth another £5 a month in adverts. Maybe that works out fine, but I don't pay for Sky because of this. London Underground brainwashes millions of people every day. They spend £4.50 on a ticket, but TFL want an extra 15p from advert income. Passengers then spend the cost of that advertising and then some on products they see being advertised, a cost they wouldn't have born without the adverts. Some businesses may make the bulk of their money from advertising other companies, but most don't.
  - tripzilch 7y ago
    I'm not sure about your examples, they don't seem to be on line data harvesting tracking ads, monetizing consumers of software or content. Maybe I'm missing the analogy here. Anyway, it was this comment, they explained the idea better than I did maybe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20988742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20988742

api 7y ago

The trope is backwards. If a business doesn't charge they have no choice but to make the user the product. If the user pays they have the option.

rock_hard 7y ago
Not really though Look no further than TV manufacturers, the moment one of them decided to substitute below market prices with selling people’s data the others had to follow to stay competitive!
- Silhouette 7y ago
  I still wonder how true this really is. Every time this subject comes up, all I seem to find are people who just want a good screen, and often who don't mind paying a higher price for it. Presumably there are also people who are sufficiently price-sensitive when buying a large flat-screen TV that the reduction from having bundled junkware makes a difference, but as far as I know, I have yet to meet one. If anything, by now I'd say "smart TV fatigue" is setting in, much the same as "smartphone fatigue" a little while ago. Enough people have had these devices for long enough to see all the a-bit-too-clever software get out of date and stop working, and then they start to see the bundled online services and so on as a negative and start asking their more techie friends and family for advice on how to avoid the problems next time.
  - rovr138 7y ago
    I wish I could buy a really good screen with no “smart” software at all. I can plug an Xbox if I want, or a shield, or a Roku, or an Amazon fire stick/tv, or an Apple TV, or a chrome cast Just add a bunch of ports and KISS. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle
    - Silhouette 7y ago
      The irony is that you can still buy just a good screen with good connectivity options and basic controls, but the market is advertised as "display screens" intended for things like advertising or video walls. I don't understand why the same manufacturers/distributors offering these products don't also pitch them as TVs with well-defined specs and no junk, probably with some sort of "expert"/"pro" branding that makes them look like a high-end choice. You could pitch one of those, a basic 2.1 home sound system or the like, and maybe a small control/switching box that everything plugs into and that also accepts your source feeds, and you've got a mini home-theatre-style arrangement that could be quite attractive to those who value decent gear but don't have the budget and/or space for a full home theatre setup that would cost at least 2-3x as much for entry-level equipment.
      - jamiek88 7y ago
        Because only two manufacturers make large OLED screens and maybe three make advanced LED screens and they are all massive conglomerates that control the market.
        Silhouette 7y ago
        I suppose my implied question here is why control the market in that way even if they do have the practical ability to do so? If there is a market for simple, good quality products and people willing to pay a fair price for them, why would you exclude it, particularly in favour of a market where more of your revenue comes from dubious sources that could backfire in terms of PR and/or be less reliable in terms of future potential earnings?

noobermin 7y ago

This sort of thing cannot be remedied apart from regulation.

tripzilch 7y ago

As someone in another thread mentioned, it's because the marketing budgets are way bigger than what people would, or even could, pay. Whichever corporations are paying for these revenue streams of monetized data and attention, they can (and do) easily outbid whatever a human customer is willing or able to pay for software or services that don't track you. It's pretty obvious when you think about it. All the incentives for commercial software / services / sites anywhere are stacked against the user actually paying with money instead of data. There isn't even a good infrastructure for getting/passing this money, unlike the giant system of ad networks passing tracking data back and forth. People (complete idiots, IMHO) have been saying this is the transaction, you're paying with your data for the "free internet". But for starters, there is no choice. Also, nobody asked me. I've been "paying" with my data without consent for YEARS, even though I try not to. And now we see it's not an either/or question. They can just make you pay for the service AND extract your data and track you. Because why not both? Again we don't have a lot of choice.

isostatic 7y ago
> As someone in another thread mentioned, it's because the marketing budgets are way bigger than what people would, or even could, pay. This makes no sense. Someone paying £43 a month for Sky TV in the UK is only worth another £5 a month in adverts. Maybe that works out fine, but I don't pay for Sky because of this. London Underground brainwashes millions of people every day. They spend £4.50 on a ticket, but TFL want an extra 15p from advert income. Passengers then spend the cost of that advertising and then some on products they see being advertised, a cost they wouldn't have born without the adverts. Some businesses may make the bulk of their money from advertising other companies, but most don't.
- tripzilch 7y ago
  I'm not sure about your examples, they don't seem to be on line data harvesting tracking ads, monetizing consumers of software or content. Maybe I'm missing the analogy here. Anyway, it was this comment, they explained the idea better than I did maybe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20988742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20988742