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At some point, and I feel it is close, we need to subscribe to stuff and simply pay for the stuff we want and need to use. The internet always have been a place

At some point, and I feel it is close, we need to subscribe to stuff and simply pay for the stuff we want and need to use. The internet always have been a place where most stuff is free and people got used to that. At some point after that the dark parts and ad parts of the web will reside; but I do not think it will completely disappear.

yborg 6y ago
That will do nothing. They will take the sub revenue and keep the current privacy monetization too. The only way to stop it is legislation.
- unicornporn 6y ago
  Exactly. This blog clearly showed that tracking remained even after switching to a paid plan. These companies have tasted the forbidden fruit of surveillance capitalism and they won't roll back voluntarily.
  - Talanes 6y ago
    The market-based approach wouldn't have these companies rolling back their surveillance, but consumers en masse moving over to paid, privacy-focused alternatives. I don't actually consider this remotely likely, but the world is getting weirder, so I'm not writing off the highly improbable so easily.
    - unicornporn 6y ago
      There's an excellent example in this very thread on how politics (i.e. democracy) can trump capital. Read here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26034131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26034131 More on this: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=no&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fnrkbeta.no%2F2019%2F12%2F18%2Fdisqus-delte-persondata-om-titalls-millioner-internettbrukere-uten-at-nettsidene-visste-om-det%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=no&tl=en&u=htt... https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=no&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fnrkbeta.no%2F2020%2F09%2F04%2Fdatatilsynet-mener-det-er-sannsynlig-at-disqus-har-brutt-personvernloven%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=no&tl=en&u=htt...
    - bachmeier 6y ago
      > The market-based approach wouldn't have these companies rolling back their surveillance, but consumers en masse moving over to paid, privacy-focused alternatives. I see what you're saying, but you're referring to something like a "market-based solution" to this problem. The one and only market-based outcome is the one we have. This is a case of imperfect information. There's no reason to expect a market-only approach to deliver a desirable outcome when one party has so much more information than the other.
      - Talanes 6y ago
        "What has happened is all that could happen" is surely not the best line of argument you have?
- strogonoff 6y ago
  If a service is paid while allowing itself to engage in data mining and monetisation, it will lose most of its paying users to a more ethical competitor as soon as someone bothers to read the ToS. If a paid service engages in data mining in violation of its own ToS, it is liable to be punished by law as soon as that leaks, so that’s another counter-incentive. The expectation of free service is what enables shady practices: new companies can hardly compete on price with a giant that doesn’t charge money and is incentivised to keep users locked in by making migration to another service difficult.
  - orangepanda 6y ago
    > If a service is paid while allowing itself to engage in data mining and monetisation, it will lose most of its paying users Will it lose some users? Sure. Most? No. You can buy a tv costing 4 digits that happily will harvest data and show you ads.
    - strogonoff 6y ago
      First, could you name this TV set so that others don’t make the same mistake? TV prices decreased a lot over past years (50 inch 4K units go for below $500 I think), in fact I suspect that the hardware is sponsored by ad revenue in some cases. Second, context matters. Buying a TV is different from setting up a commenting system for your site. In one case you want to consume, in the other to be a service provider (you have a website, possibly generate profit from it, probably know what JavaScript is). Moreover, you are unlikely to be able to make your own TV, but you are much more likely to be able to set up your own commenting system if you can’t find a company to handle that responsibly.
  - Un1corn 6y ago
    >it will lose most of its paying users to a more ethical competitor as soon as someone bothers to read the ToS So never? People don't read the ToS and certainly don't judge services by it. It seems people have come to accept surveillance capitalism as a fact of life
    - 6y ago
spijdar 6y ago
Even that may not be enough - the article mentions this, and points out that even the paid version of Disqus includes these trackers. Just like paid cable television still includes ads, I fear even paying for content won't alone bring the end of ads and tracking, since providers can always make even more off both subscriptions and tracking...
pfranz 6y ago
I already think that has happened for companies and startups, but I don't think much progress at all has been made for individuals. I'm not seeing it. Newspapers and cable both heavily rely on ads. Credit card fees eat up way too much for small transactions. I had hoped Paypal would have addressed this 20 years ago. They seemed best positioned to bypass traditional credit card companies. Cryptocurrencies seem like it technically could work, but I don't see that happening. One way around is the iTunes model. Where everything is bundled under a single company (Apple) that negotiates and/or batches transactions with credit card companies--or eats the fee on small transactions as a loss leader for larger ones. Patreon seems like a decent candidate for this. Another benefit of a centralized model is trust an familiarity. I'm more likely to use Apple or Patreon for subscriptions because individual companies suck with alerting you before reoccurring payments or letting you cancel. How do you see the money side playing out?
- KirillPanov 6y ago
  > Newspapers and cable both heavily rely on ads ... Cryptocurrencies seem like it technically could work, but I don't see that happening. Because of the fundamental asymmetry in the law: advertising+tracking don't require AML/KYC, cryptocurrencies (mostly) do. If your users pay you with their attention or tracking data, you're not required to verify their identities, ask them if they're terrorists, store copies of their passports in some hacker-magnet database, or any of that. If your users pay you with cryptocurrencies you have to do all of that. The problem isn't a business problem or a technological problem, it's a regulatory problem. This outrageous double standard is massively subsidizing the adtech-surveillance monster. Require AML/KYC be performed on users before ads can be shown to them, and if ads are shown or data collected without AML/KYC, impose the same "corporate death penalty" allowed for AML/KYC failures. Or else eliminate AML/KYC for cryptocurrencies.
  - pfranz 6y ago
    The use case I was thinking of for individuals is more like paying a nickel to read an article. I'm not really familiar with AML/KYC requirements, but I'm not sure I see the need. I would imagine most people would want a basic account so they could revisit paid content later. Any laundering would get caught looking at your business' finances (what you do with the money) or tracking crypto accounts in a more traditional manor. I've used cryptocurrencies here and there for online services (merch and digital services) and don't remember any additional scrutiny. I reasons I had in mind are the confusion and overhead of using crypto for the average person. I guess if there were some regulatory requirements in a made-up "ideal" scenario, I would see it mirroring existing banks and credit cards where your source wallet was from a "sanctioned" account to track location for local taxes and whatnot. The onus wouldn't be put on the business other than having an allowlist (by prefix or something)--but none of that exists. I would think a lot more structure an institutions would need to exist anyway to make cryptocurrencies more palatable to individuals.
tal8d 6y ago
I've been around long enough to remember a time when the web was full of content that didn't originate from profit motive. Just a bunch of people talking about their interests and sharing their creations. Even the stuff that was commercially motivated was largely innocuous, because they were focused more on brand awareness - which doesn't need a surveillance system. All that personal interest stuff is still out there, despite all the insistence that the only alternative to the ad-supported-spy-machine paradigm is a subscription model. I really wouldn't mind seeing all the click seeking platforms get wrecked, because they incentivize the most useless and annoying noise.
- spicyramen 6y ago
  This is very true, I know this has been discussed over and over, but I definitely prefer reading a personal HTML old style based blog than a Medium blog post which I need to access in incognito.
  - alexgmcm 6y ago
    Yeah, I think the problem with self-hosting vs. Medium is that it is harder for the authors to reach a large audience. I mean, even if you don't want to make money from your cool project or tutorial or whatever, you still want people to see it. But man, I really hate Medium.
    - geek_at 6y ago
      not true, I have started a blog and hosted it on blogspot at first but wasn't satisfied with the style in general and the lack of customization so I built my own in bootstrap + php and hosted it on a 5€/month Server. No tracking, no ads, no external libraries, no referral links, no monetization. After switching to my own I re-wrote one of the articles of my old blogspot posts (word for word) and because my custom solution was so much easier on the eye, the post picked up and I got TV and Radio interview requests, etc. Even reddit and hn hugs and thousands of concurrent users didn't bring it down. You don't need Medium, you need to write stuff that people are interested in reading. https://blog.haschek.at https://blog.haschek.at
baxtr 6y ago
I think this really depends on your moral compass. It’s not solely a matter of your business model. I don’t want to start paying for everything I want to read on the 50 pages I browse per week.
freddie_mercury 6y ago
While I agree that more people should be willing to pay for services, I'm less certain that it would actually make a huge difference. Once upon a time premium TV stations, like HBO, had no ads. After all, you were paying for them directly. Then they realized they could charge you a monthly subscription fee and show ads. And all the theorizing about "but then a competitor that doesn't show ads would take all their customers" hasn't really panned out. So I imagine the same thing would happen on the internet. Companies have all discovered that most people are willing to tolerate ads almost everywhere, giving them "free" revenue. So we get ads on things we pay for: Kindles, Microsoft Windows, etc.
- mhb 6y ago
  Just a minor quibble about the Kindle since I'm very appreciative that there is a choice of buying one with or without ads.
codegladiator 6y ago
> and simply pay for the stuff we want and need to use The post tells the paid plans have all the same trackers.
- pmyteh 6y ago
  Yes. And the 'paid so you are the customer, not the product' thing has limits. That was one of the original value propositions of cable television, but it turns out to be more profitable to get a platform monopoly and then sell ads as well as charging a fee. Paid-for might be necessary for non-scummy, but it's certainly not sufficient.
dmortin 6y ago
> At some point, and I feel it is close, we need to subscribe to stuff and simply pay for the stuff we want and need to use. The problem is not everyone has the means to pay for everything. E.g. what if Youtube and other video sites switched to a paid only model? Youtube is full of educational videos which can help a poor person to learn stuff and make his situation better. Such persons would be at a disadvantage if they can't afford Youtube's fee.
a_imho 6y ago
Disagree. Imo most content is basically throwaway entertainment (especially social media) thus very interchangeable and has very little value. The internet is simply not that important.
clairegraham 6y ago
Commento.io is a very simple alternative that costs $10/month. We use that on downforeveryoneorjustme.com.
- laxmin 6y ago
  It is also open source and can be easily hosted. https://gitlab.com/commento https://gitlab.com/commento

yborg 6y ago

That will do nothing. They will take the sub revenue and keep the current privacy monetization too. The only way to stop it is legislation.

unicornporn 6y ago
Exactly. This blog clearly showed that tracking remained even after switching to a paid plan. These companies have tasted the forbidden fruit of surveillance capitalism and they won't roll back voluntarily.
- Talanes 6y ago
  The market-based approach wouldn't have these companies rolling back their surveillance, but consumers en masse moving over to paid, privacy-focused alternatives. I don't actually consider this remotely likely, but the world is getting weirder, so I'm not writing off the highly improbable so easily.
  - unicornporn 6y ago
    There's an excellent example in this very thread on how politics (i.e. democracy) can trump capital. Read here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26034131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26034131 More on this: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=no&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fnrkbeta.no%2F2019%2F12%2F18%2Fdisqus-delte-persondata-om-titalls-millioner-internettbrukere-uten-at-nettsidene-visste-om-det%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=no&tl=en&u=htt... https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=no&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fnrkbeta.no%2F2020%2F09%2F04%2Fdatatilsynet-mener-det-er-sannsynlig-at-disqus-har-brutt-personvernloven%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=no&tl=en&u=htt...
  - bachmeier 6y ago
    > The market-based approach wouldn't have these companies rolling back their surveillance, but consumers en masse moving over to paid, privacy-focused alternatives. I see what you're saying, but you're referring to something like a "market-based solution" to this problem. The one and only market-based outcome is the one we have. This is a case of imperfect information. There's no reason to expect a market-only approach to deliver a desirable outcome when one party has so much more information than the other.
    - Talanes 6y ago
      "What has happened is all that could happen" is surely not the best line of argument you have?
strogonoff 6y ago
If a service is paid while allowing itself to engage in data mining and monetisation, it will lose most of its paying users to a more ethical competitor as soon as someone bothers to read the ToS. If a paid service engages in data mining in violation of its own ToS, it is liable to be punished by law as soon as that leaks, so that’s another counter-incentive. The expectation of free service is what enables shady practices: new companies can hardly compete on price with a giant that doesn’t charge money and is incentivised to keep users locked in by making migration to another service difficult.
- orangepanda 6y ago
  > If a service is paid while allowing itself to engage in data mining and monetisation, it will lose most of its paying users Will it lose some users? Sure. Most? No. You can buy a tv costing 4 digits that happily will harvest data and show you ads.
  - strogonoff 6y ago
    First, could you name this TV set so that others don’t make the same mistake? TV prices decreased a lot over past years (50 inch 4K units go for below $500 I think), in fact I suspect that the hardware is sponsored by ad revenue in some cases. Second, context matters. Buying a TV is different from setting up a commenting system for your site. In one case you want to consume, in the other to be a service provider (you have a website, possibly generate profit from it, probably know what JavaScript is). Moreover, you are unlikely to be able to make your own TV, but you are much more likely to be able to set up your own commenting system if you can’t find a company to handle that responsibly.
- Un1corn 6y ago
  >it will lose most of its paying users to a more ethical competitor as soon as someone bothers to read the ToS So never? People don't read the ToS and certainly don't judge services by it. It seems people have come to accept surveillance capitalism as a fact of life
  - 6y ago

spijdar 6y ago

Even that may not be enough - the article mentions this, and points out that even the paid version of Disqus includes these trackers. Just like paid cable television still includes ads, I fear even paying for content won't alone bring the end of ads and tracking, since providers can always make even more off both subscriptions and tracking...

pfranz 6y ago

I already think that has happened for companies and startups, but I don't think much progress at all has been made for individuals. I'm not seeing it. Newspapers and cable both heavily rely on ads. Credit card fees eat up way too much for small transactions. I had hoped Paypal would have addressed this 20 years ago. They seemed best positioned to bypass traditional credit card companies. Cryptocurrencies seem like it technically could work, but I don't see that happening. One way around is the iTunes model. Where everything is bundled under a single company (Apple) that negotiates and/or batches transactions with credit card companies--or eats the fee on small transactions as a loss leader for larger ones. Patreon seems like a decent candidate for this. Another benefit of a centralized model is trust an familiarity. I'm more likely to use Apple or Patreon for subscriptions because individual companies suck with alerting you before reoccurring payments or letting you cancel. How do you see the money side playing out?

KirillPanov 6y ago
> Newspapers and cable both heavily rely on ads ... Cryptocurrencies seem like it technically could work, but I don't see that happening. Because of the fundamental asymmetry in the law: advertising+tracking don't require AML/KYC, cryptocurrencies (mostly) do. If your users pay you with their attention or tracking data, you're not required to verify their identities, ask them if they're terrorists, store copies of their passports in some hacker-magnet database, or any of that. If your users pay you with cryptocurrencies you have to do all of that. The problem isn't a business problem or a technological problem, it's a regulatory problem. This outrageous double standard is massively subsidizing the adtech-surveillance monster. Require AML/KYC be performed on users before ads can be shown to them, and if ads are shown or data collected without AML/KYC, impose the same "corporate death penalty" allowed for AML/KYC failures. Or else eliminate AML/KYC for cryptocurrencies.
- pfranz 6y ago
  The use case I was thinking of for individuals is more like paying a nickel to read an article. I'm not really familiar with AML/KYC requirements, but I'm not sure I see the need. I would imagine most people would want a basic account so they could revisit paid content later. Any laundering would get caught looking at your business' finances (what you do with the money) or tracking crypto accounts in a more traditional manor. I've used cryptocurrencies here and there for online services (merch and digital services) and don't remember any additional scrutiny. I reasons I had in mind are the confusion and overhead of using crypto for the average person. I guess if there were some regulatory requirements in a made-up "ideal" scenario, I would see it mirroring existing banks and credit cards where your source wallet was from a "sanctioned" account to track location for local taxes and whatnot. The onus wouldn't be put on the business other than having an allowlist (by prefix or something)--but none of that exists. I would think a lot more structure an institutions would need to exist anyway to make cryptocurrencies more palatable to individuals.

tal8d 6y ago

I've been around long enough to remember a time when the web was full of content that didn't originate from profit motive. Just a bunch of people talking about their interests and sharing their creations. Even the stuff that was commercially motivated was largely innocuous, because they were focused more on brand awareness - which doesn't need a surveillance system. All that personal interest stuff is still out there, despite all the insistence that the only alternative to the ad-supported-spy-machine paradigm is a subscription model. I really wouldn't mind seeing all the click seeking platforms get wrecked, because they incentivize the most useless and annoying noise.

spicyramen 6y ago
This is very true, I know this has been discussed over and over, but I definitely prefer reading a personal HTML old style based blog than a Medium blog post which I need to access in incognito.
- alexgmcm 6y ago
  Yeah, I think the problem with self-hosting vs. Medium is that it is harder for the authors to reach a large audience. I mean, even if you don't want to make money from your cool project or tutorial or whatever, you still want people to see it. But man, I really hate Medium.
  - geek_at 6y ago
    not true, I have started a blog and hosted it on blogspot at first but wasn't satisfied with the style in general and the lack of customization so I built my own in bootstrap + php and hosted it on a 5€/month Server. No tracking, no ads, no external libraries, no referral links, no monetization. After switching to my own I re-wrote one of the articles of my old blogspot posts (word for word) and because my custom solution was so much easier on the eye, the post picked up and I got TV and Radio interview requests, etc. Even reddit and hn hugs and thousands of concurrent users didn't bring it down. You don't need Medium, you need to write stuff that people are interested in reading. https://blog.haschek.at https://blog.haschek.at

baxtr 6y ago

I think this really depends on your moral compass. It’s not solely a matter of your business model. I don’t want to start paying for everything I want to read on the 50 pages I browse per week.

freddie_mercury 6y ago

While I agree that more people should be willing to pay for services, I'm less certain that it would actually make a huge difference. Once upon a time premium TV stations, like HBO, had no ads. After all, you were paying for them directly. Then they realized they could charge you a monthly subscription fee and show ads. And all the theorizing about "but then a competitor that doesn't show ads would take all their customers" hasn't really panned out. So I imagine the same thing would happen on the internet. Companies have all discovered that most people are willing to tolerate ads almost everywhere, giving them "free" revenue. So we get ads on things we pay for: Kindles, Microsoft Windows, etc.

mhb 6y ago
Just a minor quibble about the Kindle since I'm very appreciative that there is a choice of buying one with or without ads.

codegladiator 6y ago

> and simply pay for the stuff we want and need to use The post tells the paid plans have all the same trackers.

pmyteh 6y ago
Yes. And the 'paid so you are the customer, not the product' thing has limits. That was one of the original value propositions of cable television, but it turns out to be more profitable to get a platform monopoly and then sell ads as well as charging a fee. Paid-for might be necessary for non-scummy, but it's certainly not sufficient.

dmortin 6y ago

> At some point, and I feel it is close, we need to subscribe to stuff and simply pay for the stuff we want and need to use. The problem is not everyone has the means to pay for everything. E.g. what if Youtube and other video sites switched to a paid only model? Youtube is full of educational videos which can help a poor person to learn stuff and make his situation better. Such persons would be at a disadvantage if they can't afford Youtube's fee.

a_imho 6y ago

Disagree. Imo most content is basically throwaway entertainment (especially social media) thus very interchangeable and has very little value. The internet is simply not that important.

clairegraham 6y ago

Commento.io is a very simple alternative that costs $10/month. We use that on downforeveryoneorjustme.com.

laxmin 6y ago
It is also open source and can be easily hosted. https://gitlab.com/commento https://gitlab.com/commento