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So many times on this website, people say, "I will pay for the service to get rid of advertising." You pay for this service and rides aren't getting any cheaper
by dfxm12 11mo ago
So many times on this website, people say, "I will pay for the service to get rid of advertising." You pay for this service and rides aren't getting any cheaper. It is naive to think any company isn't finding ways to monetize your behavior, whether you're paying them or not.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- jcalvinowens 11mo agoPeople object to advertising because it is annoying and distracting. If the ads disappear, they got what they paid for. It's not about avoiding their "behavior being monitized", most people don't care about that at all.
- mitthrowaway2 11mo agoNo, I care about that as much or more.
- pavel_lishin 11mo agoBut are you most people? I'd wager that just by the virtue of being commenters on HN, we're already outliers.
- jcalvinowens 11mo agoYou're an outlier. Ask ten people at your local bus stop if this is important to them, and tell me how many start laughing at you :)
- squigz 11mo agoIf I went up to random people and went like, "Do you approve of companies tracking what you buy, eat, do, where you go, and every other aspect of your life?" I promise you I would get a majority of "No"s
- jcalvinowens 11mo agoThe question I'm asking is "would you pay more money if the service promised not to sell your data". That's a hard no for most people. If you frame it as a negative thing with no downsides for agreeing with you, of course people will agree. But that's not the reality.
- squigz 11mo agoThe claim you made was that people don't care about their behavior being monetized.
- jcalvinowens 11mo agoDon't care enough to sacrifice anything tangible to avoid it, yes. I would think it's obvious the question as you framed it biases responses to the point they're meaningless...
- dylan604 11mo ago'People object to advertising because it is annoying and distracting. If the ads disappear, they got what they paid for. It's not about avoiding their "behavior being monitized", most people don't care about that at all.' That's your quote as I read it in case some editing happens. There's no caveat in your original post that you are claiming now. You've moved the goal posts. As you originally stated, I agree with all of the follow up comments to it that you are now trying to expand on your original comment. Maybe that's what you always meant but just left out of the original. It happens. But now you're being obstinate about it in a way that doesn't look good.
- jcalvinowens 11mo agoNo, you're just nitpicking the semantics and missing the forest for the trees. Everyone except you seems to understand that that was the beginning of a discussion, not an opening statement in a fucking court.
- dfxm12 11mo agoI specifically mentioned people on this website. Based on comments I regularly come across on this website, I don't think the person you're responding to is an outlier. I would hope we can stay on topic.
- jcalvinowens 11mo agoYou missed the point. People on this website are too small a fraction of society to ever move the needle. My point is that it doesn't matter what people on this website want with respect to privacy, in our capitalist democratic society it will never happen unless most people want it. The reality right now is that most people don't want it.
- dfxm12 11mo agoIf that was your point, I suggest you post more clearly in the future, because your post did not suggest this.
- jcalvinowens 11mo ago[flagged]
- criddell 11mo agoSome of us don't care that much about advertising, but we object to surveillance.
- gremlinunderway 11mo agoPeople "don't care" because they do not understand the implications or the technology, not because they genuinely have no interest in privacy. Of course its easy to dupe people without technical literacy by characterizing it as some benign "targeted advertising" as if its a service being provided for you (when clearly it's not) rather than the actual answer which is "we want to follow your every movement and pattern of behaviour as if we had someone following you in an unmarked car and then sell that data to anyone willing to cough up the cash without any of your consent". This narrative is incredibly toxic and honestly a very antisocial viewpoint of people as if they are all just stupid sheep who deserve to be exploited. There's zero reason why its unfair for a person to both object to advertising because of the annoyance (because it is annoying) AND for a person to not want to be digitally surveilled endlessly without their consent.
- jcalvinowens 11mo ago> People "don't care" because they do not understand the implications or the technology, not because they genuinely have no interest in privacy. I don't disagree with you there. > This narrative is incredibly toxic and honestly a very antisocial viewpoint of people as if they are all just stupid sheep who deserve to be exploited. The people get what they vote for, whether or not its what they deserve. The only way to move the needle on this is to educate people. Telling people they're "stupid sheep" for not wanting the thing you think they should want is not typically a winning strategy, in my experience. > There's zero reason why its unfair for a person to both object to advertising because of the annoyance (because it is annoying) AND for a person to not want to be digitally surveilled endlessly without their consent. I'm simply saying I think most people care more about the first thing.
- ssl-3 11mo agoYour opinion is unpopular in this subset of folks here, but it's valid. It isn't out-of-keeping in this kind of company for a person to start discussions about personal data privacy. In fact: We chat about this stuff here all the time. But in reality: The number of discussions I've had about personal data privacy and monetization face-to-face with people that I did not meet through a computer network, or bring up myself is exactly 1. It's thus my observation that most people in the world care about this issue approximately...never. (The reason they don't care may be that they don't know enough to even begin to question whether the people behind their air fryer, genealogical DNA service, garage door opener, and food delivery system may have ulterior motives. But guesses about root causation are, at best, both tangential and broadly inconsequential. We can guess and figure and re-figure and even prove theories until the cows come home. And it doesn't matter. They didn't care yesterday, they still don't care today while I write this, and they will continue to not care tomorrow.)
- teeray 11mo agoIf you have the disposable income to pay to remove advertising, you are exactly the market segment advertisers want to reach. They will always be willing to pay to outbid that segment’s own desire to not see ads.
- landgenoot 11mo agoThis is very insightful
- neom 11mo agoJust to give you another little titbit if you're interested. I work in go to market, and part of that is awareness, and part of that is advertising. Where people use the platform has a huge impact on the prices you pay to advertise on the platform, for example reddit is very expensive because they have a very high mobile traffic population, and the ads can't be blocked, advertising on X is hard because the people I want to reach all pay for premium, so the traffic you get from it now is basically useless, linkedin skews towards desktop, but their targeting is amazing, but because they skew towards desktop people run ad blocks, some platforms let you pick the devices you serve to, some don't, all of it impacts the price you pay to serve the ads.
- landgenoot 11mo agoSo, don't do targeted advertising then?
- neom 11mo agoWell, it doesn't really matter that it's expensive or hard: that's what we have VCs for. More money you can raise, better targeting you can pay up for. You'd be amazed at how much oxygen you can suck out of a market for a million bucks.
- matheusmoreira 11mo agoYep. People are paying for the privilege of segmenting themselves into the high disposable income categories of the market. They're paying to do the corporation's market segmentation for them.
- goalieca 11mo agoI paid quite a fee to have crave streaming service in canada. It's pretty premium with HBO and that. Yet, all the star trek shows are now behind ads.. several minutes for a 20 minute episode of lower decks. Things are getting out of hand.
- charles_f 11mo agoI was paying $24 for crave. They showed me ads. I'm not paying crave anymore.
- oniony 11mo agoBut rest assured they'll blame piracy for their downturn in revenue.
- mystraline 11mo agoGet a cheap VPN and then pirate. That technically is also competition. And if the market offers garbage for money, but the illegal market is free and better, go with the illegal choice. You'll be treated like a criminal either way with DRM. So... Yeah.
- charles_f 11mo agoFor $24 a month you can even get an expensive vpn
- Grisu_FTP 11mo agoFor 24$ a month you can get a good enough VPS to stream Terabytes of movies with jellyfin. Even if you take away the money a vpn costs, you still can have a decent vps with decent storage. If you only need storage, even better. Found an offer for a "Storage VPS" with low hardware specs and 2TB of HDDs for 10€/monthly
- monerozcash 11mo ago
- AznHisoka 11mo agoIf you arent paying, you are the product. And if you are paying… you’re still the product as well.
- matheusmoreira 11mo agoYeah. Only way to avoid becoming the product is to become a "pirate" instead. Pretty sad but it is what it is.
- thenthenthen 11mo agoThers no ads on the high seas?
- dylan604 11mo agoNot until that asshat company wanting to deploy satellite constellation that displays ads from space. It's not like there are billboards in the middle of the ocean
- qwerpy 11mo agoI've seen ads of several varieties: - Public websites are chock full of ads - Downloading a file often means hopping through several redirects (each of which is an ad) and sometimes even having to "complete an offer" to get the final link - Private websites have some affiliate deal with VPN providers. "We did the research, this one is the best, if you subscribe through this link you will get some perks on our website". Of all the kinds of ads out there, that last one is the least objectionable to me. They don't force it on you, it doesn't clog up the important parts of the site, and they supposedly do some research to pick the best provider to affiliate with. I "never" click on ads but this one worked on me.
- underlipton 11mo agoDelivery in particular remains underpriced at even the high prices we see. The way the platforms are set up, you're basically paying to chauffeur a single order straight to your house, on-demand. Mobile tech and "own car" efficiencies don't begin to cover those costs. The problem was that this is the kind of service that they had to offer in order to supersede existing delivery. In an ideal world, you'd instead have drivers assigned to either particular neighborhoods or particular restaurants, allowing for order-stacking and predictable routes. Bonus for set-time daily deliveries (get your order in before 6 or have to wait until 9). Bigger bonus for set neighborhood drop-off points (like those consolidated mailboxes, but warming compartments). Anything more bespoke would cost extra. Unfortunately, the balance of inefficient operations, decreasing competition, and "line go up" is that prices have to increase.
- abdullahkhalids 11mo agoDelivery was financially viable for decades before delivery apps. That's why restaurants did it on their own. What's not financially viable is VCs investing billions to create global oligopolies, and and then expecting outsized returns on that investment. At the same time you have processes like increasing suburbanization and development of even more car-centric infrastructure, which makes houses and restaurants even further from each other, and makes cheaper delivery vehicles like motorbikes infeasible.
- underlipton 11mo agoAll of that is true. However, I think you don't account enough for the differences in the current and previous delivery models in delivery's viability. The old model was "drivers employed or contracted to individual restaurants, with fairly strict distance limits." Today's apps let you order from arbitrary restaurants to arbitrary delivery addresses. The other factors make the situation worse, but just this one is enough to turn a viable model into one that can't be profitable without someone involved getting scammed.
- efsavage 11mo agoIn the earliest days of getting people to pay for cable TV when OTA was free, the pitch was that you'd see fewer/no commercials. That didn't last long...
- SoftTalker 11mo agoNot really. Cable TV started as a better way for people to get OTA channels when they were in marginal reception areas. My family had cable TV in the 1970s and it was a maybe eight or ten OTA channels and except for the PBS station they all had commercials, between shows and during shows. HBO was the first offering that didn't have ads during the show.
- efsavage 11mo agoInteresting, I grew up in an area with good reception, so the pitch was definitely fewer commercials on the cable channels (HBO, Nickelodeon, MTV), I remember standing in the living room as the salesman said this. It was true for a while, but eventually they caught up to OTA ad loads.
- dylan604 11mo agoHBO was always a premium ad free channel. MTV was never promoted as ad free.
- skeeter2020 11mo agoand premium channels were ridiculously expensive back then too!
- dylan604 11mo agoYea, the no ads theory of the history is cable seems to be pervasive. The only ad free channels were the premium ones like HBO. It's like people think the OTA channels that were packaged together had some magic applied that eliminated ad breaks from the exact same feed as the OTA broadcast. The cable only channels like USA also had ads as well. I guess it's just another example if you tell a lie often enough people will accept it as truth
- charles_f 11mo agoI think when you give money for a service it's a reasonable expectation that the company you're giving the money to will respect your privacy, if only because selling your data is not a great outlook and could jeopardize the main revenue stream. I'm guess I'm proven wrong
- toomuchtodo 11mo agoWithout regulation, you have no protections against these corporate actions. If you’re expecting or relying on corporations to act in good faith, you are going to be disappointed.
- tdeck 11mo agoUber, famously a company that respects existing laws and regulations.
- hypeatei 11mo agoJust one more piece of regulation, that will fix it! Voting with your wallet is better. No one is forcing you to use Uber, get more creative and stop using men with guns to impose <current hot take because I'm pissed> onto everyone else.
- ryandrake 11mo agoIs there any recent example of one of these huge tech companies actually reducing advertising due to people "voting with their wallets"? Or even making any customer-favoring change whatsoever (ad-related or otherwise) as a result of voting with wallet? "Vote with your wallet" gets trotted out here all the time but it doesn't work.
- hypeatei 11mo agoDoesn't work for who? If you stop using their service then you're not subject to getting your data sold by them because that data simply won't exist. There is no inherent need to get tech companies to "stop advertising" on a societal level. It gets trotted on a lot here because the overarching narrative on HN is that regulation is an answer to everything when it's easier to just... not use the thing if you don't like it. Rather than creating a mountain of regulations that only big business can comply with, I think it's better to choose what you do with your money as a consumer.
- neom 11mo agoUber ride app has ads in it now on top of data collection, service fees, etc, uber eats also sells sponsored placement, and then the fees and prices now... like what the actual fuck is this? https://s.h4x.club/9Zun85Lj https://s.h4x.club/9Zun85Lj - these people have lost their minds, y'all really gonna drive the business down to 10 loyal customers who you milk to hell and high water? Weird strategy.
- lotsofpulp 11mo agoTarget just started hitting me with completely third party ads right after you press pay in their app. They have also advertised for the Starbucks in thr Target stores long before when you go to pickup something.
- neom 11mo agoAs someone who has spent their whole career in growth and awareness for business building, I see why people hate ads so much now - personally I love running ads, trying to place a good ad in a good spot for someone who will genuinely appreciate it, it can be very rewarding... but late stage capitalism, aka fervent consumerism, has driven business into a real bad place, it's a shame because business and commerce is pretty fun, better than conquering via killing anyways.
- gunt_crusher 11mo ago[flagged]
- pjmlp 11mo agoWhich is why I don't pay to remove ads on YouTube, nor I give Amazon the pleasure to see more from my money than what I need to pay for prime deliveries.
- dylan604 11mo agoAre you saying you are purchasing a minimum of $25 to get those prime deliveries, or are you some how thinking you can pay for Prime deliveries while not also paying for Prive Video??
- pjmlp 11mo agoI am paying for the deliveries, the fact that Prime Video is part of the deal is something nice, but not what I care about, even less so after Amazon decided to force ads to people that were already paying in first place.
- micromacrofoot 11mo agoWe have to be real, there's no way anyone is currently paying the real cost of having McDonalds delivered right now...
- tanseydavid 11mo agoThey just need a subscription model at Mickey Dee's. They can make up for the inefficiency with volume </sarc>.
- micromacrofoot 11mo agothat and a shitty little delivery robot
- Esophagus4 11mo agoHave we tried AI drive through kiosks yet?? Surely that is the answer.
- dewey 11mo agoWhen people say they are going to pay for an ad free product they very often underestimate how much the service would cost them. This is often a price higher than what they would be willing to pay.
- scbzzzzz 11mo agoI respectfully disagree my friend. When Investors , board, wall street is chasing second order and third order delta increase in a stock enshitification is bound to happen. If there is a board that wants return higher than previous year and when you can't optimize costs by improving tech, You find new avenues like showing 2 ads, showing 3 ads. Increasing subscription price or cheekly modifing terms of service and selling your data to 3rd party data brokers. it has nothing to do with subscription cost.
- paulddraper 11mo agoOkay. They’re going to sell to marketers for ads I don’t watch?
- netdevphoenix 11mo agoThe key concept is that maximising the monetisation of each user is the ultimate goal. Once that is understood, Uber's behaviour makes sense as a subgoal of that bigger goal
- FireBeyond 11mo agoYup. The most surprising thing about this announcement is that they haven't been doing it, already...
- mattlutze 11mo agoThe prevailing implementation of capitalism compels all companies to continue developing revenue streams to increase their overall “worth.” Any company that has unique or rare data is compelled to do things with it. Those that don’t either can’t figure out how or explicitly reject the reward function of contemporary capitalism. We should really expect those deviations to be the exception.
- benced 11mo ago"You pay for this service and rides aren't getting any cheaper" - you can't just say things. You could very well be right but you need to actually look at their margin profile over time to know if this is true. To give an industry that's a counterexample to the "they add ads and don't make things cheaper", look at groceries. It's a terrible, single-digit percentage margin business but they sell everything from placement in catalogue to whether the product is in a convenient spot on the shelf. That's a clear case where ads make it _cheaper_ for consumers.
- monerozcash 11mo agoYeah, in competitive markets this would inherently cause some downward pressure on prices.
- jcalvinowens 11mo ago> look at groceries. It's a terrible, single-digit percentage margin business but they sell everything from placement in catalogue to whether the product is in a convenient spot on the shelf. That's a clear case where ads make it _cheaper_ for consumers. I don't follow... it certainly improves the grocer's margins, but how does that do anything at all for the consumer?
- benced 11mo agoI should have been clearer: it's a terrible single-digit percentage business, including the ads. The ads are cross-subsidizing the food.
- jcalvinowens 11mo ago> The ads are cross-subsidizing the food. I don't think you were unclear, that's what I understood you to be saying. Surely, the grocer just pockets the extra ad money? Never in my life have I seen a for-profit corporation voluntarily charge a lower price than the market will bear because they increased their margin by other means. The ads are also inherently shitty to the producers: they all have to spend money on the grocer's ads now, because if they don't, their competitors will. If you look at it that way, the ads are almost extortion.
- alpineman 11mo agoSometimes I believe they aren't monetizing me. With Kagi I feel quite confident, for example. It depends how prominently they put 'no monetization/ads' as part of their marketing. Uber doesn't do that, to be fair, and never have done.