3 ms·

As you self-admitted, there's important nuances. When you say: "you can read all the content on my website for one year for $2". ...nobody will give you $2. B

by fleddr 5y ago

As you self-admitted, there's important nuances. When you say: "you can read all the content on my website for one year for $2". ...nobody will give you $2. Because they're conditioned that content is free. Because payment is a hassle. Because they may not know one year ahead what the value is. Same thing with games in the app store. A game you love and play a lot, clearly would be fairly priced at 5$. And still game developers are forced to make them free to play with in-game purchases to make up for it. People really do not want to pay for anything in the digital space. They won't pay a fixed fee, hate subscriptions too, and don't really donate at scale. As still people eagerly consume all this stuff anyway, I think the ethical point is incredibly one-sided if not hypocritical. You claim that the economic value is zero yet consume it anyway. Ads are the only model widely usable to overcome this. No other successful model has emerged. Nobody wants to run ads, they have to, because the "customers" are in fact the immoral ones. With no immediate successor on the horizon, I think ads should be redesigned to be less invasive. No excessive tracking, no absurd resource usage, and security protection.

brailsafe 5y ago
I think steam and world of warcraft would say otherwise with respect to gaming. Most of my friends have large catalogues of $60+ games that they've bought on a whim and probably never played much.
- fleddr 5y ago
  Yes, and people also pay for Netflix. But focusing on the exceptions is missing the forest for the trees.
  - brailsafe 5y ago
    No, I think that's absurd. People pay for all kinds of shit all the time, and it's silly to say that game developers are forced to do anything. They're certainly incentivized to try and make the most money possible, but that doesn't mean that fixed price digital or subscription games are exceptions. Every console platform has some kind of subscription service, and wouldn't be around if people didn't buy fixed price games. Blizzard and Activision's main cash cows are fixed price and subscription products (that also have additional superfluous purchases) and were just purchased for $70b. Ya there are a ton of super profitable free to play games, I play one of them, but I originally bought it before it was free. But it's not freemium exclusively.
    - fleddr 5y ago
      Steam isn't mobile gaming. You're ten thousand miles outside the scope of the discussion. You might as well say that people pay for bread, if the point is that people do pay for some things.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
arrosenberg 5y ago
> Ads are the only model widely usable to overcome this. No other successful model has emerged. Nobody wants to run ads, they have to, because the "customers" are in fact the immoral ones. This is why I don't think the ethics are worth considering - this isn't a failing on individual users making personal choices. The ad industry has essentially made parts of the economy anticompetitive. Facebook and Google pick winners and losers via the ad market (whether intentionally or not), subsidized by private equity, which most of the actual producers of games do not want to participate in, but have no choice. Consumers may or may not be getting the best products, they are getting the products promoted by the ad industry. I don't see how any reasonable legislator or regulator can look at that situation as healthy, competitive or sustainable.
asoneth 5y ago
I agree with you that most internet content and mobile apps could not exist without advertising because they would not be profitable. But similar to D&D alignments, whether something is profitable is completely orthogonal to whether it is ethical. Human endeavors may be profitable but not ethical, ethical but not profitable, both profitable and ethical, or neither ethical nor profitable. So I share the parent commenter's concern about people who seem to be claiming that a thing must be ethical because it is necessary to be profitable. It's perfectly possible for a profitable thing to be profitable-good, profitable-neutral, or profitable-evil.
- fleddr 5y ago
  I agree with this separation of concerns, but you have to paint the full picture. Without ads, we have a pure ethical situation. Desirable content and an eager reader to consume it. All is good. Except for the fact that this content cannot exist unless the producer runs ads, which some consider unethical. If we end the story here, the content disappears since there's no ethical way to sustain it. So the original ethical transaction (content -> reader) is gone. Also known as throwing away the baby with the bath water. If we are to complete the picture though, you might as well claim it's the consumer being unethical here, for flat out refusing to offer any payment for a service they want, and clearly costs money to produce.
  - asoneth 5y ago
    Perhaps you are right. I can think of a couple additional considerations: First, it's worth acknowledging that some amount of desirable content already exists without advertising. My partner and I pay a subscription to three streaming services, a couple local newspapers, a town newsletter, and a physical news magazine. Besides the magazine they do not use ads to supplement their revenue. Having said that, I certainly agree that content that is only marginally valuable to people (who have money) would cease to be profitable and would therefore decrease in a world without advertising. Second, I think it depends on to what degree you believe that the ends can justify the means. How acceptable is it to manipulate consumers if it means you can achieve a more ethical end like giving them desirable content? Do those things cancel out? Personally I think it depends on how unethical one finds the advertising and how beneficial one finds the content. We already restrict certain kinds of advertising to children or for addictive substances. Many countries do not allow advertisements that encourage consumers to request brand-name medications from their doctors, and China has even banned advertisements for luxury products. Many people are concerned about advertising that creates unrealistic body expectations in children or promotes excessive levels of consumption. (Having worked on a DARPA project in a war zone a decade ago, I have spent a lot of time thinking about to what degree the ends justify the means, and I still have no good answers.)

by fleddr 5y ago

brailsafe 5y ago

I think steam and world of warcraft would say otherwise with respect to gaming. Most of my friends have large catalogues of $60+ games that they've bought on a whim and probably never played much.

fleddr 5y ago
Yes, and people also pay for Netflix. But focusing on the exceptions is missing the forest for the trees.
- brailsafe 5y ago
  No, I think that's absurd. People pay for all kinds of shit all the time, and it's silly to say that game developers are forced to do anything. They're certainly incentivized to try and make the most money possible, but that doesn't mean that fixed price digital or subscription games are exceptions. Every console platform has some kind of subscription service, and wouldn't be around if people didn't buy fixed price games. Blizzard and Activision's main cash cows are fixed price and subscription products (that also have additional superfluous purchases) and were just purchased for $70b. Ya there are a ton of super profitable free to play games, I play one of them, but I originally bought it before it was free. But it's not freemium exclusively.
  - fleddr 5y ago
    Steam isn't mobile gaming. You're ten thousand miles outside the scope of the discussion. You might as well say that people pay for bread, if the point is that people do pay for some things.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

arrosenberg 5y ago

> Ads are the only model widely usable to overcome this. No other successful model has emerged. Nobody wants to run ads, they have to, because the "customers" are in fact the immoral ones. This is why I don't think the ethics are worth considering - this isn't a failing on individual users making personal choices. The ad industry has essentially made parts of the economy anticompetitive. Facebook and Google pick winners and losers via the ad market (whether intentionally or not), subsidized by private equity, which most of the actual producers of games do not want to participate in, but have no choice. Consumers may or may not be getting the best products, they are getting the products promoted by the ad industry. I don't see how any reasonable legislator or regulator can look at that situation as healthy, competitive or sustainable.

asoneth 5y ago

I agree with you that most internet content and mobile apps could not exist without advertising because they would not be profitable. But similar to D&D alignments, whether something is profitable is completely orthogonal to whether it is ethical. Human endeavors may be profitable but not ethical, ethical but not profitable, both profitable and ethical, or neither ethical nor profitable. So I share the parent commenter's concern about people who seem to be claiming that a thing must be ethical because it is necessary to be profitable. It's perfectly possible for a profitable thing to be profitable-good, profitable-neutral, or profitable-evil.

fleddr 5y ago
I agree with this separation of concerns, but you have to paint the full picture. Without ads, we have a pure ethical situation. Desirable content and an eager reader to consume it. All is good. Except for the fact that this content cannot exist unless the producer runs ads, which some consider unethical. If we end the story here, the content disappears since there's no ethical way to sustain it. So the original ethical transaction (content -> reader) is gone. Also known as throwing away the baby with the bath water. If we are to complete the picture though, you might as well claim it's the consumer being unethical here, for flat out refusing to offer any payment for a service they want, and clearly costs money to produce.
- asoneth 5y ago
  Perhaps you are right. I can think of a couple additional considerations: First, it's worth acknowledging that some amount of desirable content already exists without advertising. My partner and I pay a subscription to three streaming services, a couple local newspapers, a town newsletter, and a physical news magazine. Besides the magazine they do not use ads to supplement their revenue. Having said that, I certainly agree that content that is only marginally valuable to people (who have money) would cease to be profitable and would therefore decrease in a world without advertising. Second, I think it depends on to what degree you believe that the ends can justify the means. How acceptable is it to manipulate consumers if it means you can achieve a more ethical end like giving them desirable content? Do those things cancel out? Personally I think it depends on how unethical one finds the advertising and how beneficial one finds the content. We already restrict certain kinds of advertising to children or for addictive substances. Many countries do not allow advertisements that encourage consumers to request brand-name medications from their doctors, and China has even banned advertisements for luxury products. Many people are concerned about advertising that creates unrealistic body expectations in children or promotes excessive levels of consumption. (Having worked on a DARPA project in a war zone a decade ago, I have spent a lot of time thinking about to what degree the ends justify the means, and I still have no good answers.)