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How are websites and apps going to make money though? Like it or not, the reason the internet became this popular is because of all the free stuff on it. If eve

How are websites and apps going to make money though? Like it or not, the reason the internet became this popular is because of all the free stuff on it. If everything was behind subscription fees it possibly would never have taken off. I don't think I would've ever used Google if they had charged a fee for the service. This would effectively make political interests entrenched even more on the internet, because they'll see it as worthwhile to make free services. They get to feed you politically slanted ideas - just like free political newspapers. >Operating in the EU is not a liability if you treat your users data in a respectful and responsible way. Common sense alone would answer your questions on what is and what isn't allowed in the vast majority of the cases. Relying on common sense is playing with fire. Common sense says that with this many people using the services of these companies that people are okay with what these companies are doing. That's not what GDPR says and that's not something I had any vote on or anything like that. You might prefer the cable TV model, but I prefer YouTube. I like that I don't have to pay anything to go look at a large variety of topics. Far more than any paid service would ever provide.

jacquesm 5y ago
Advertising worked fine before tracking. Selling your users data, especially this kind of data is a thing that more than negates the value your users derived from your service, in some places it might get you killed. There are many ways for websites and apps to make money, and if you can't then maybe you simply shouldn't.
- Mirioron 5y ago
  Advertising without tracking doesn't work. Only a small set of businesses can really advertise online without tracking. Any business that is in a specific area or doesn't use English will find it a bad deal, because most of their ads will be shown to people who don't understand the language or aren't in the area. Even with tracking ads get the language component wrong frequently. Unskippable ads in a language you can't understand is even worse than normal.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Many billions of dollars are spent annually on advertising without tracking: every ad in print and the vast bulk of all radio and TV advertising are not tracked at all. The web was the first medium were advertising tracking could be done and it is simply an arms race, if everybody stopped doing it then it would work just as well as it does today (and it would be a damn sight less annoying).
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > Advertising without tracking doesn't work. It does. Moreover, the benefits of tracking for advertising are yet to be proven. Can't find it on mobile, but there have already been businesses giving up an tracked advertising because it had all the efficacy of shouting in a sandstorm.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  >Selling your users data, especially this kind of data is a thing that more than negates the value your users derived from your service, in some places it might get you killed. There are many ways for websites and apps to make money, and if you can't then maybe you simply shouldn't. This is too general of a statement. The majority of people in the US don't care about digital privacy and do get positive value.
dmitriid 5y ago
> How are websites and apps going to make money though? Ah yes. The unsolved issue of businesses making money without wholesale collection and sale of user data. No business ever made money until collecting and selling user data became possible.
- Mirioron 5y ago
  Except that these are businesses giving away a free product which has been immensely useful. Starting out I wouldn't have paid for almost any of the services that I use on a daily basis.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > Except that these are businesses giving away a free product which has been immensely useful And that somehow makes it okay to collect personal data wholesale without consent and sell it to the highest bidder?

jacquesm 5y ago

Advertising worked fine before tracking. Selling your users data, especially this kind of data is a thing that more than negates the value your users derived from your service, in some places it might get you killed. There are many ways for websites and apps to make money, and if you can't then maybe you simply shouldn't.

Mirioron 5y ago
Advertising without tracking doesn't work. Only a small set of businesses can really advertise online without tracking. Any business that is in a specific area or doesn't use English will find it a bad deal, because most of their ads will be shown to people who don't understand the language or aren't in the area. Even with tracking ads get the language component wrong frequently. Unskippable ads in a language you can't understand is even worse than normal.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Many billions of dollars are spent annually on advertising without tracking: every ad in print and the vast bulk of all radio and TV advertising are not tracked at all. The web was the first medium were advertising tracking could be done and it is simply an arms race, if everybody stopped doing it then it would work just as well as it does today (and it would be a damn sight less annoying).
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > Advertising without tracking doesn't work. It does. Moreover, the benefits of tracking for advertising are yet to be proven. Can't find it on mobile, but there have already been businesses giving up an tracked advertising because it had all the efficacy of shouting in a sandstorm.
s1artibartfast 5y ago
>Selling your users data, especially this kind of data is a thing that more than negates the value your users derived from your service, in some places it might get you killed. There are many ways for websites and apps to make money, and if you can't then maybe you simply shouldn't. This is too general of a statement. The majority of people in the US don't care about digital privacy and do get positive value.

dmitriid 5y ago

> How are websites and apps going to make money though? Ah yes. The unsolved issue of businesses making money without wholesale collection and sale of user data. No business ever made money until collecting and selling user data became possible.

Mirioron 5y ago
Except that these are businesses giving away a free product which has been immensely useful. Starting out I wouldn't have paid for almost any of the services that I use on a daily basis.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > Except that these are businesses giving away a free product which has been immensely useful And that somehow makes it okay to collect personal data wholesale without consent and sell it to the highest bidder?