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Nobody has been "conditioned" to think anything. If they opted to make things free at the start of the internet era then it's now their problem to figure out ho

Nobody has been "conditioned" to think anything. If they opted to make things free at the start of the internet era then it's now their problem to figure out how to pivot to actually paying their expenses and turn profit. It's not the users' problem per se (unless they get aggressively pushed out but then they go to alternatives so that company still doesn't make profit out of them). Elementary psychology -- one that's studied at 9th grade where I live -- could have told them that it's super hard giving people something for free and then taking it away. People don't react well to that and never have. They only have themselves to blame.

14 5y ago
From what I read they made well over $19 billion in revenue in 2020. They are making plenty of money they can afford to put towards the problem. They just don’t want to take from their own bottom line.
acdha 5y ago
These are mutually contradictory: > Nobody has been "conditioned" to think anything. … > Elementary psychology -- one that's studied at 9th grade where I live -- could have told them that it's super hard giving people something for free and then taking it away. People don't react well to that and never have. That was in fact my point: since the mid-to-late 90s, Internet users have become accustomed to thinking that they pay for internet connectivity but that most of the content they view will be free either because it's been subsidized by investors or advertisers. There are exceptions but they generally tend to be either connected to the physical world or a handful of areas like commercial movies or gaming where the major rightsholders were largely successful at preventing people from getting used to free content. That puts you in exactly the dynamic I described: very few people think that YouTube-level content is something they pay for but their expectations are set by the kind of resources that billions of ad profits can support.

14 5y ago

From what I read they made well over $19 billion in revenue in 2020. They are making plenty of money they can afford to put towards the problem. They just don’t want to take from their own bottom line.

acdha 5y ago

These are mutually contradictory: > Nobody has been "conditioned" to think anything. … > Elementary psychology -- one that's studied at 9th grade where I live -- could have told them that it's super hard giving people something for free and then taking it away. People don't react well to that and never have. That was in fact my point: since the mid-to-late 90s, Internet users have become accustomed to thinking that they pay for internet connectivity but that most of the content they view will be free either because it's been subsidized by investors or advertisers. There are exceptions but they generally tend to be either connected to the physical world or a handful of areas like commercial movies or gaming where the major rightsholders were largely successful at preventing people from getting used to free content. That puts you in exactly the dynamic I described: very few people think that YouTube-level content is something they pay for but their expectations are set by the kind of resources that billions of ad profits can support.