dalbasal

39 ms·

331.
by dalbasal 4y ago
Is it? I think Youtube premium represents <5% of youtube's revenue. Meanwhile, it's also a (weak, IMO) attempt to compete with netflix and/or spotify.
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by dalbasal 4y ago
First, perhaps not. In that case, the budget airline mindset kicks in: if some people are willing to pay for something, charge differentially. However, I wouldn't be so sure that £10 per user isn't the actual value of the ad imp
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by dalbasal 4y ago
The general concept is, IMO, deceiving. Making ads optional is often suggested, sometimes tried, and there aren't many success stories. Most successful combinations of ad/payment commercial strategies aren't customer choice s
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by dalbasal 4y ago
Perhaps legally, these nitpicks are valid. Lawyers are nitpicky types. "Deception" defined in a legally functional way, tends to see things differently to average people using common sense. I agree with the parent, there is a lot
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by dalbasal 4y ago
Ok... I think I must have worded the first comment regrettably. I didn't mean to rebut the author's points, quibble or criticise even. He writes well, interesting and I like it. I am taking this as a discussion piece and going in
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by dalbasal 4y ago
Is Imperial hugeness a key factor? If so, why not the Achaemenids, the Chinese? Why assume that a massive empire in necessary though? It doesn't take that empire-scale resources to build any of these. These aren't really more re
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by dalbasal 4y ago
I wonder to what extent any of these ancient industrial revolutions would have been similar to the modern one. Mass produced crucible steel certainly would have given Rome even more military and trade might, but it's hard to see what
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by dalbasal 4y ago
OK. I also didn't mean to come off harsh. The author uses Rome largely as a stand-in for "ancient world" in any case. The reason I brought this up is because I want to push back against the frame which implies conditions made
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by dalbasal 4y ago
So.. To the first point, I don't see exactly where we disagree. "Rome" is effectively used by the author as a placeholder for "ancient world." He also notes that there is/was an ongoing discussion about being o
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by dalbasal 4y ago
I feel like singling out Rome is unnecessary here. Why Rome specifically? Civilizations existed in the mediterranean (and elsewhere) for thousands of years before and alongside Rome. Why even assume that the industrial revolution had to em
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by dalbasal 4y ago
IDK... If you look at a very broad sweep of cultures at various times... the classification of social classes get very blurry: slavery, peasantry, serfs, cottiers, indentured labour, wage labour... Which of these best represents Middle King
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by dalbasal 4y ago
You can choose not to purchase, to an extent. You will likely use Amazon, microsoft and google at work in most industries. In many, avoiding paying them is highly limiting. I suppose you can also avoid paying the post office Even if you man
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by dalbasal 4y ago
This "existence proof" line or argument is, IMO, totally disingenuous when applied like this. If you think Google, amzn, msft or whatnot exist in a competitive marketplace like restaurants and refrigerators.... it's just fool
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by dalbasal 4y ago
People have lots of food choices available, a decent understanding of food, reasonably legible information about ingredients, nutrition, etc. Google (and other tech monopolies) do not have readily available substitutes. Network effects and
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by dalbasal 4y ago
If by "voting with your wallet" you mean passively buying whatever is the best option available to you, sure. Consumer action doesn't mean that. It means some sort of organised campaign to influence companies/industries
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by dalbasal 4y ago
>> Voting with dollars works with corps It does not. This is a silly myth. It works in the sense that if people don't buy, companies change. There has almost never been a "consumer action" that organised to influence co
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by dalbasal 4y ago
I really disagree. It's really obviously symbiotic if you look at any level of detail. Old leftists see it as corporations taking over the state. Conservatives see it as the state taking over corporations. Meanwhile, it's extremel
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by dalbasal 4y ago
Most international (and even local only) european debit cards are owned or serviced by Visa and Mastercard. A store isn't denying people either Debit or Credit. It's only denying them bananas & laundry detergent. This is total
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by dalbasal 4y ago
>> Unlike Company rule in India [3] where one had little recourse as a subject if the EIC ruled against you; if Google rules against you then you can move to some other provider (of which there are many). I totally disagree. Early EIC
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by dalbasal 4y ago
You are missing the point. Yes, there are transactions that occur in cash, bank transfer & such. Fail to present a Visa/MC when you rent a car in Dublin or Brussels and you will be in for a surprise. In Dublin, standard practice is
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by dalbasal 4y ago
There are plenty of European parts where you cannot rent a car or book a hotel without visa or mastercard. Meanwhile, for a business, either of these refusing to work with you will likely kill the business on the spot. The differences betwe
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by dalbasal 4y ago
I agree with the overall view but, corporations with more power than states is the wrong frame, IMO. What we're seeing here is symbiosis, not competition. Google empowers (overpowers) the state and the state empowers Google. It's
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by dalbasal 4y ago
In a way, I'm actually glad this is the case. The "blue check fix" minimizes negative publicity while doing nothing for 99% of people. If a bad policy is consistently applied, at least it can be understood and criticised.
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by dalbasal 4y ago
I was reminded of David Graeber's description of banking bureaucracies, as I read this. At ground level, bank employees blame irrational form filling, small and nonsensical process requirements on "regulation." In reality, th
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by dalbasal 4y ago
IDK. I suspect this is less true than most acknowledge. Black box or not, google are creating these systems, analyzing, optimising and implementing them. It's indeed hard or impossible to trace back individual examples and their whys.
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by dalbasal 4y ago
>> Google also faces a perhaps impossible problem of how to detect good content on YouTube Perhaps, but only because Google is being small minded. Define the "problem" in a certain way, and come up with certain solutions. A
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by dalbasal 4y ago
OK.. In a sense, I am overstating. Having an anti-spam team is obviously a recognition that SEO/Spam exists and that Google is trying to discourage or mitigate. But Google is well beyond just attracting spam. Success in Google search r
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by dalbasal 4y ago
The dissonance is between Google's native perception and external reality: reality 1 : The www exists. Google indexes it, analyzes it and delivers it to users. Users like certain things, like original content. reality 2 : Google&#x27
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by dalbasal 4y ago
I think this narrative is stretched. Most of our calories are from monocropped commodities like maize, canola & soy. These are indeed efficient. High calorie per dollar value, but also high calorie per land/fertilizer/water&#x
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by dalbasal 4y ago
>> We know people don’t find content helpful if it seems like it was designed to attract clicks rather than inform readers. So... Back when "SEO" was new, I would read the Matt Cutts blog. He was head of "anti-spam.&q

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