3 ms·

Yes, but if we're talking about incentives and "primordial domino tiles" then compensated advertising is what createa the incentives for the whole attention eco

by xg15 9mo ago

Yes, but if we're talking about incentives and "primordial domino tiles" then compensated advertising is what createa the incentives for the whole attention economy and addictive design in the first place. Feel free to keep doing "pro-bono" advertising, but shareholders definitely wouldn't.

stingraycharles 9mo ago
That’s my thinking. Follow the money, get rid of the source of money, and the whole thing falls down. Of course that will not happen as there are way too many interests involved.
fauigerzigerk 9mo ago
>compensated advertising is what createa the incentives for the whole attention economy Why would you not want to keep people engaged and even "addicted" in order to keep them as subscribers and make them upgrade to more expensive subscriptions?
- ajam1507 9mo ago
  Do you have a specific example of a subscription based platform that is as insidiously addicting as the ad supported ones?
  - codethief 9mo ago
    Netflix?
  - fauigerzigerk 9mo ago
    - Games. - Gambling while rarely subscription based is usually paid for directly rather than ad funded. - Newspaper subscriptions are no less addictive for news junkies than purely ad funded newspapers. - I watch a lot of Youtube, far more than I used to before I started paying for the subscription. - Netflix and in the olden days TV. I'm not entirely sure what "insidiously addictive" actually means. I do sometimes scroll through some TikTok vids. I don't find it particularly addictive compared to, say, Hacker News.
    - ajam1507 9mo ago
      You're right that modern video games and Netflix are a good examples of things that are non-ad-based, but are insidiously addictive. I used "insidiously addictive" to mean something which is engineered specifically to maximize addictive potential, and is not addictive purely on its own merits. An example of a game development pattern that I would consider "merely addictive" would be a game developer trying to make their game as fun as possible. Does maximizing fun inherently make a game more likely to be addictive? Of course, but addiction was not the criteria being optimized for. An example of an insidiously addictive video game would be one where the developers specifically created features in the hopes that they would create a dependency with the product to drive subscriptions or sales. It's at least partially about the level of cynicism with which the product is being developed. A more stark example would be a fast food restaurant refining their recipe to make it more delicious versus one adding drugs to the food to make people addicted. Newspapers and Youtube are both examples of services that are engineered to be ad-based but have a subscription option, so they're most likely still driven by the same attention-seeking incentives.
      - fauigerzigerk 9mo ago
        Corporations want to sell as much as possible to make as much money as possible. Whenever the frequency, quantity or intensity of use drives up earnings, you are bound to get the same result: More "addictive" designs are better for earnings than less "addictive" designs. The difference (if any) between addictive because fun and addictive by design is irrelevant for this outcome. What I will grant you is that the link can be more direct with ad funding. If a newspaper publisher knows that some very loyal subscribers only ever read 5 articles every morning, making that particular group read 30 articles would not drive up earnings. But I think on average across all readers the link between reading more and higher earnings would still exist and hence the incentive to make the product more "addictive".
        ajam1507 9mo ago
        > If a newspaper publisher knows that some very loyal subscribers only ever read 5 articles every morning, making that particular group read 30 articles would not drive up earnings. I think it's hard to say if that's true. A consumer might be willing to pay more for a service they use a lot rather than a little. What I do know is that I can see plainly that advertising-driven services are among the worse offenders for creating addictive products and other revenue models generally provide healthier incentives to direct development. The EU's general approach here is probably better than banning advertising since it diagnoses a clear problem, but leaves it open for regulators and companies to address it.
dahart 9mo ago
I don’t understand what you mean about shareholders and pro-bono, can you elaborate? Apple advertises Apple products on Apple channels, and Apple’s shareholders love that, and it’s not “pro-bono”. I don’t think you have the incentives correctly summarized. The incentive of businesses like Google, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram are to make money, and the only way they’ve figured out how to do that at scale is advertising. None of those sites had ads when they started.

by xg15 9mo ago

stingraycharles 9mo ago

That’s my thinking. Follow the money, get rid of the source of money, and the whole thing falls down. Of course that will not happen as there are way too many interests involved.

fauigerzigerk 9mo ago

>compensated advertising is what createa the incentives for the whole attention economy Why would you not want to keep people engaged and even "addicted" in order to keep them as subscribers and make them upgrade to more expensive subscriptions?

ajam1507 9mo ago
Do you have a specific example of a subscription based platform that is as insidiously addicting as the ad supported ones?
- codethief 9mo ago
  Netflix?
- fauigerzigerk 9mo ago
  - Games. - Gambling while rarely subscription based is usually paid for directly rather than ad funded. - Newspaper subscriptions are no less addictive for news junkies than purely ad funded newspapers. - I watch a lot of Youtube, far more than I used to before I started paying for the subscription. - Netflix and in the olden days TV. I'm not entirely sure what "insidiously addictive" actually means. I do sometimes scroll through some TikTok vids. I don't find it particularly addictive compared to, say, Hacker News.
  - ajam1507 9mo ago
    You're right that modern video games and Netflix are a good examples of things that are non-ad-based, but are insidiously addictive. I used "insidiously addictive" to mean something which is engineered specifically to maximize addictive potential, and is not addictive purely on its own merits. An example of a game development pattern that I would consider "merely addictive" would be a game developer trying to make their game as fun as possible. Does maximizing fun inherently make a game more likely to be addictive? Of course, but addiction was not the criteria being optimized for. An example of an insidiously addictive video game would be one where the developers specifically created features in the hopes that they would create a dependency with the product to drive subscriptions or sales. It's at least partially about the level of cynicism with which the product is being developed. A more stark example would be a fast food restaurant refining their recipe to make it more delicious versus one adding drugs to the food to make people addicted. Newspapers and Youtube are both examples of services that are engineered to be ad-based but have a subscription option, so they're most likely still driven by the same attention-seeking incentives.
    - fauigerzigerk 9mo ago
      Corporations want to sell as much as possible to make as much money as possible. Whenever the frequency, quantity or intensity of use drives up earnings, you are bound to get the same result: More "addictive" designs are better for earnings than less "addictive" designs. The difference (if any) between addictive because fun and addictive by design is irrelevant for this outcome. What I will grant you is that the link can be more direct with ad funding. If a newspaper publisher knows that some very loyal subscribers only ever read 5 articles every morning, making that particular group read 30 articles would not drive up earnings. But I think on average across all readers the link between reading more and higher earnings would still exist and hence the incentive to make the product more "addictive".
      - ajam1507 9mo ago
        > If a newspaper publisher knows that some very loyal subscribers only ever read 5 articles every morning, making that particular group read 30 articles would not drive up earnings. I think it's hard to say if that's true. A consumer might be willing to pay more for a service they use a lot rather than a little. What I do know is that I can see plainly that advertising-driven services are among the worse offenders for creating addictive products and other revenue models generally provide healthier incentives to direct development. The EU's general approach here is probably better than banning advertising since it diagnoses a clear problem, but leaves it open for regulators and companies to address it.

dahart 9mo ago

I don’t understand what you mean about shareholders and pro-bono, can you elaborate? Apple advertises Apple products on Apple channels, and Apple’s shareholders love that, and it’s not “pro-bono”. I don’t think you have the incentives correctly summarized. The incentive of businesses like Google, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram are to make money, and the only way they’ve figured out how to do that at scale is advertising. None of those sites had ads when they started.