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> How can 'Big Tech' and 5 billion Internet users align our interests for the long term? This is a fascinating question, I want to see this discussed more. I'l

> How can 'Big Tech' and 5 billion Internet users align our interests for the long term? This is a fascinating question, I want to see this discussed more. I'll throw some thoughts to get a conversation started: I would happily pay for big tech company services - if I'm worth $30 a month in advertising revenues, I'm willing to pay $30 to subscribe to the same services in exchange for privacy. I'm convinced that I'm not the only person who thinks like this. I am waiting for a product to come around and service this market. <Shut_up_and_take_my_money.jpeg>

zamadatix 6y ago
While I think this market is definitely there I think the problem is it's the much smaller market so a company isn't going to make a competitive set of services and intentionally alienate the other e.g. 90% of users with it by doing pay only. On the flip side it's been shown that all but a very small fraction of that 10% will use the data sale funded version of these services it's all that's offered. So it ultimately comes down to "do we create an alternative funding model for that 1 percent of user space" which doesn't seem like much incentive vs trying to find ways to get more more out of the 99% of users. I think the only way this changes is if that userbase grows significantly, I don't think it's simply been an overlooked/forgotten internet business model.
ip26 6y ago
I suspect it's another micropayment problem. You're actually worth $0.05 in ad revenue (or something like that), but due to payment friction & billing fees you wind up paying monthly Spotify: $10 Facebook: $20 News x4 sources: $40 LinkedIn: $30 HackerNews $5 Various Forums: $50 (etc) You get the idea- in the end you're paying incredible sums of money for a collection of services that just aren't worth all that much. A conclusion supported by the fact that your use of these services currently generates pennies a day in ad revenue. We can see this game at play today in news, where you could easily blow $50/mo subscribing to a small selection of decent papers. It's not a big deal if you only had one subscription, but few people read only one paper- or participate in only one social network. To make matters worse, as seen in the cable industry, paying subscribers by definition have money to spend. This means they are by definition the most valuable advertising targets, which makes the lure of advertising to your subscribers eventually impossible to resist...
vxNsr 6y ago
> if I'm worth $30 a month in advertising revenues Per service though, are you willing to spend $30/m each for what facebook was, for what twitter was, for what youtube was, for what reddit was, before ads took over? (that's over $100/m on 4 sm sites... now we're getting into medium, tech news sites, gmail, google search, maps, etc. And what about the people who can't afford a $300/m "internet" bill are they just cut out of this brave new world?

zamadatix 6y ago

While I think this market is definitely there I think the problem is it's the much smaller market so a company isn't going to make a competitive set of services and intentionally alienate the other e.g. 90% of users with it by doing pay only. On the flip side it's been shown that all but a very small fraction of that 10% will use the data sale funded version of these services it's all that's offered. So it ultimately comes down to "do we create an alternative funding model for that 1 percent of user space" which doesn't seem like much incentive vs trying to find ways to get more more out of the 99% of users. I think the only way this changes is if that userbase grows significantly, I don't think it's simply been an overlooked/forgotten internet business model.

ip26 6y ago

I suspect it's another micropayment problem. You're actually worth $0.05 in ad revenue (or something like that), but due to payment friction & billing fees you wind up paying monthly Spotify: $10 Facebook: $20 News x4 sources: $40 LinkedIn: $30 HackerNews $5 Various Forums: $50 (etc) You get the idea- in the end you're paying incredible sums of money for a collection of services that just aren't worth all that much. A conclusion supported by the fact that your use of these services currently generates pennies a day in ad revenue. We can see this game at play today in news, where you could easily blow $50/mo subscribing to a small selection of decent papers. It's not a big deal if you only had one subscription, but few people read only one paper- or participate in only one social network. To make matters worse, as seen in the cable industry, paying subscribers by definition have money to spend. This means they are by definition the most valuable advertising targets, which makes the lure of advertising to your subscribers eventually impossible to resist...

vxNsr 6y ago

> if I'm worth $30 a month in advertising revenues Per service though, are you willing to spend $30/m each for what facebook was, for what twitter was, for what youtube was, for what reddit was, before ads took over? (that's over $100/m on 4 sm sites... now we're getting into medium, tech news sites, gmail, google search, maps, etc. And what about the people who can't afford a $300/m "internet" bill are they just cut out of this brave new world?