4 ms·

Yes just make user data hoarding and targeted advertising a nonviable business model, and watch the horrible secondary effects start to dissipate. it requires a

Yes just make user data hoarding and targeted advertising a nonviable business model, and watch the horrible secondary effects start to dissipate. it requires a lot of political will that currently isn’t there but we have become too resigned in the US that things can’t change. I still hate cookie banners though :).

tayo42 1y ago
Idk if it's the thought that the US can't change things, but these concerns are mostly hypothetical for almost all people. How are real people's lives being effected by these problems?
- anonbuddy 1y ago
  centralisation of power leads to fascism and historically people didn't really like that ie 2. WW
afpx 1y ago
That will never happen as long as people are terrified with anxiety from continuous media exaggeration and "Security and Defense" are hidden behind thick veils and dark budgets.
harrall 1y ago
It doesn’t happen because when a company replaces advertising with a subscription, people balk and then switch to a competitor that doesn’t charge anything by using advertising.
- emseetech 1y ago
  Converting a service to a subscription is hard. Customers get used to "free" and will always be resentful. Starting as a subscription service at least doesn't feel like a broken promise.
  - immibis 1y ago
    The problem is that a lot of these services are just worthless. As in their market price is precisely zero dollars and zero cents. The reason you won't get me to subscribe to your random recipe or news website isn't the competition - the site simply provides no value. If it also costs nothing, then I might be indifferent to browsing it when it appears as a search result. If it costs anything, I definitely won't. I also feel the same about your competitors, so I'm not replacing you with them - I'm just browsing this type of content less. And that's a good thing for me and for society overall.
- arrosenberg 1y ago
  We need to (once again) define “free” pricing models as predatory and broadly outlaw them. They distort the idea of a free and fair marketplace by poisoning consumer expectations of what things should cost.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > We need to (once again) define “free” pricing models as predatory and broadly outlaw them Free services funded by ads have been a boon for the poor.
    - ben_w 1y ago
      That rips off the advertisers and/or leaves the poor poorer. For any given ad supported service, one of two things must be true: (1) the ad spend was more than or equal to the cost of the service for those users (2) the ad spend was less than the cost of the service for those users From fork (2), it follows that the service isn't sustainable anyway. From fork (1), it follows that the buyers of the ad slots in turn only make a profit if those ads led to sales higher than the ad spend. But for any given poor person, buying that which was advertised on the ad supported service necessarily means spending more than they would have on a non-ad-supported version of the same ad supported services.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - AxEy 1y ago
        This assumes that poor people's attention is liquid and can readily be turned to cash whenever they please. It doesn't matter how much you think my attention is "really worth". If I want the service now, have no cash, but can pay with my attention, I am strictly more enabled than if the service only accepts cash.
        ben_w 1y ago
        I make no assumption there. The fork between (1), (2) is how much cash their attention is actually turned into. To put it another way: what's the attention of a poor person really worth, in dollars? Answer is always less than or equal to the amount they can spend.

tayo42 1y ago

Idk if it's the thought that the US can't change things, but these concerns are mostly hypothetical for almost all people. How are real people's lives being effected by these problems?

anonbuddy 1y ago
centralisation of power leads to fascism and historically people didn't really like that ie 2. WW

afpx 1y ago

That will never happen as long as people are terrified with anxiety from continuous media exaggeration and "Security and Defense" are hidden behind thick veils and dark budgets.

harrall 1y ago

It doesn’t happen because when a company replaces advertising with a subscription, people balk and then switch to a competitor that doesn’t charge anything by using advertising.

emseetech 1y ago
Converting a service to a subscription is hard. Customers get used to "free" and will always be resentful. Starting as a subscription service at least doesn't feel like a broken promise.
- immibis 1y ago
  The problem is that a lot of these services are just worthless. As in their market price is precisely zero dollars and zero cents. The reason you won't get me to subscribe to your random recipe or news website isn't the competition - the site simply provides no value. If it also costs nothing, then I might be indifferent to browsing it when it appears as a search result. If it costs anything, I definitely won't. I also feel the same about your competitors, so I'm not replacing you with them - I'm just browsing this type of content less. And that's a good thing for me and for society overall.
arrosenberg 1y ago
We need to (once again) define “free” pricing models as predatory and broadly outlaw them. They distort the idea of a free and fair marketplace by poisoning consumer expectations of what things should cost.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > We need to (once again) define “free” pricing models as predatory and broadly outlaw them Free services funded by ads have been a boon for the poor.
  - ben_w 1y ago
    That rips off the advertisers and/or leaves the poor poorer. For any given ad supported service, one of two things must be true: (1) the ad spend was more than or equal to the cost of the service for those users (2) the ad spend was less than the cost of the service for those users From fork (2), it follows that the service isn't sustainable anyway. From fork (1), it follows that the buyers of the ad slots in turn only make a profit if those ads led to sales higher than the ad spend. But for any given poor person, buying that which was advertised on the ad supported service necessarily means spending more than they would have on a non-ad-supported version of the same ad supported services.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - AxEy 1y ago
      This assumes that poor people's attention is liquid and can readily be turned to cash whenever they please. It doesn't matter how much you think my attention is "really worth". If I want the service now, have no cash, but can pay with my attention, I am strictly more enabled than if the service only accepts cash.
      - ben_w 1y ago
        I make no assumption there. The fork between (1), (2) is how much cash their attention is actually turned into. To put it another way: what's the attention of a poor person really worth, in dollars? Answer is always less than or equal to the amount they can spend.