Also if this resulted in the "grow at any cost - monopolize - enshittify" playbook finally dying, I think it would in fact make the world a better place by a significant margin.
These concerns are mostly orthogonal to the "grow at any cost - monopolize - enshittify" playbook. That, and startup executives at this stage are doing ok, but not spectacularly well.
That will only die when people start seeing “free” as a negative or a red flag, especially when it’s on a highly polished piece of software or a service that costs money to run.
Until then it’s impossible to bootstrap because you’ll be eaten alive by someone with funding dumping on the market.
That will only die when people start seeing “free” as a negative or a red flag, especially when it’s on a highly polished piece of software or a service that costs money to run.
August 1st Facebook shut down the servers for EchoVR, a formerly popular VR game. The announced it months ago. In the days leading up to the shutdown, people were still making fun of those who paid for optional items. You know, supported the game we were all going to miss. I said maybe if more people paid they might not shut it down. I think one kid actually had a bit of an epiphany.
That's not really the user's fault though. They didn't pay because the things to buy were not appealing enough. The developers should've either chosen a better monetization strategy or made the optional items sufficiently appealing.
I've seen some other games too where people felt compelled to throw money at them because they feared that otherwise development would be halted and the servers shut down, and it has always been indicative of a game in a bad state (since it typically means that the players are seeing the player count on Steam etc and realizing that the game is likely financially unsustainable).
>> That's not really the user's fault though. They didn't pay because the things to buy were not appealing enough.
My point was that people not only don't pay if they don't have to, they ridicule those who do, even while enjoying the benefit provided by those who do. It's a weird disconnect rooted in selfishness.
>They didn't pay because the things to buy were not appealing enough.
There are a lot of things I don't buy (both online and off) because I'm not willing to pay what they're sold for--which may or may not be what they cost. I don't have an unlimited pile of money.
And most things end eventually although if they're commoditized enough they may end up continuing to be offered by somebody/somebodies at some price.
That entire playbook is predicated on cheap and plentiful VC money. If that money dries up--which was the premise of the original comment--that strategy will die off, regardless of consumer behaviour.
The whole idea Doctorow was pointing at is that startups could use massive amounts of VC funding to attract a large base of users, often by dumping their services on the market in order to kill competitors (what was once rebranded "blitzscaling" so we wouldn't notice it was at its core an illegal business practice).
Then, once that user base was attached (and ideally stuck due to barriers like network effects or the lack of any viable competitors in the space), you start milking them by "enshittifying" the service.
But if VC money becomes more scarce, that stops working. Companies will have to generate revenue much earlier, and compete on quality of service instead of who can raise the largest VC war chest to subsidize their operations. And they won't be able to wait until that user base is built and attached before they start monetizing. They'll have to create a revenue generating service that's also good to the user because otherwise the users just won't show up.
For the existing services? Yup, you're right, the masks will start to come off (and in many cases already have).
But long-term I would expect a much healthier internet to emerge.
Tbh I’m only bothered by the annoying and shitty ways they do it. Stuff like spamming notifications, spamming my email, annoying popups, addiction mechanics, etc.
I’m quite happy with the products where you just directly pay them and receive a service. Fastmail monatizes their users and doesn’t have to do it in a shitty way.
> I’m quite happy with the products where you just directly pay them and receive a service
I’m the same way, but we’re a strong minority of users. I love that I can simply pay for YouTube Premium and not have ads, but that’s generally not a workable business model for many types of tech companies. In fact, I’m a bit surprised Google hasn’t done away with that yet, because I worked at a different tech company that frequently assessed the feasibility of subscription payments vs ad revenue, and the math just never worked out. There simply aren’t enough people willing to pay an amount that would offset the ad revenue loss. It’s the difference between stated preference and observed preference in consumer behavior.
I think paying subscribers are generally much more valuable than users monetized by ads. The problem is just that only a small percentage are willing to pay. But I’m pretty sure that per user YouTube Premium subscribers are worth a lot more to Google than free users, so I doubt they’ll get rid of it (for financial reasons anyway).
I'm not sure about that, either way. I feel like I've seen cases where this is true, and cases where it isn't.
For YouTube, for example, I'd guess this could be true, now. It depends on hours and type of content watched, yes? While the charge to advertisers per ad impression is very low, and low enough for click-throughs / other categories that might be considered 'hits' in advertisers' search for customers*, it is presumably carefully metered to ensure solidly net positive "monies"** to Google. YouTube premium is billed at a flat rate - hence, its worth likely varies rather inversely by "hours watched" as compared to ad-supported viewing, right? I.e., the best "premium" customer, strictly from the POV of max direct revenue / profit should be one who pays and doesn't watch even a second of YouTube content in a given month.
Obviously, I'm simplifying all of this a bit, and, also, not really getting to the point efficiently - Sunday morning blah blah. So, to wrap, it's all about distributions. Oftentimes, when companies introduce plans like "premium", the heaviest users immediately sign up. The distribution is often heavily skewed, initially. Over time, "non-addicts" and such do accrete ... distribution shifts a bit. That's basically why it's not so clear to me - on the one hand, YT premium charges quite a lot, AFAIK, compared to $ / ad ... but, at some number of hours viewed, that stat flips. I.e., YT makes less money (directly, at least) from Premium. Now, that's probably a quite high # of hours. But, I just have no sense of what it might be and what the metrics look like.
And, ultimately, this ended up also being a long-winded way of saying my brain still isn't fully online and I'm too dull / lazy to try and pull up Google's / Alphabet's 10-Ks etc. ... but not too dull / lazy to let the world read a big ol' pile of words! Ugh... Almost as bad as drunk texting.....
I think the option to go with ads or payments is fine. I pay for YouTube and receive a wonderful experience, others don’t want to or can’t pay, and they can still use the platform.
The problem, as I understand it, is that direct monetization only provides fixed growth and isn't enough for what venture capitalists demand. So the only solution that satisfies them is to continuously invent new and more insidious dark patterns to monetize the existing users.
>continuously invent new and more insidious dark patterns to monetize the existing users.
Which by and large doesn't work but staves off the inevitable for a while.
A lot of news has been in this boat for a while. More obnoxious patterns trying to get you to subscribe. More ads. While cutting staff to the bone and more. (And that's not even VCs for the most part.)
A lot of things that people want, not enough are willing to actually pay for.
A lot of traditional newspaper orgs have been bought be private equity, with Alden Global Capital being among the most notorious at present, ranked as the second-largest newspaper operator in the US as of July of this year:
Short-term monetization. Like Reddit kicking mods to extract value built from years of diligent practices, but damaging future value of the same resource as content quality degrades.
is there something to know about him aside from being a writer at Wired? is he a guest author with additional clout? are people really reading Wired and influenced by it?
its surprising how the data brokers haven't gotten me stuck in this algorithm based echo chamber. Its like his works must get shared around FAANG company chats, or a mailing list that all YC applicants get subscribed to out of prerequisite.
>is there something to know about him aside from being a writer at Wired?
does it seem sensible to go around asking crowds why you should care about trends?
if you get it, fine; join up.
if you don't get it, fine; you're not going to conform to that one, brag about it to your friends.
the third option, your option, of trying to convince the crowd that the trend is stupid/ridiculous/worthless/whatever is ineffective and perceived as kind of an anti-social contrarian thing to do by a lot of people.
for what it's worth , I hate the phrase too. I think it takes impact away from the actual vulgar word, and it reduces the impact of all vulgarity all together by foisting the word into the common language lexicon, but it's a trend and chances are good that it'll be gone by tomorrow.
Cory Doctorow is a pretty decent fiction writer, he's worked with wired, he's worked with the FSF/GNU/EFF in the past, has spoken publicly about a lot of perceived 'issues' that are somehow related to 'tech' as a sector and has been extraordinarily visible to the tech crowds within the United States and likely the rest of the English speaking world.
I mean I want to get it, I’m open to another perspective.
When my gut instinct says “people 30 years older than me acting like children specifically because they found someone to validate their yelling at clouds” and thats…. exactly what it is? and the only reason I see that word only here?
I feel like thats out of character for hackernews, unsubstantive except for being relatable to the moderation here as well
Such a strange question, I do not know what you value! He has written good books that cover complication of DRM etc. in a popular way, and is a prolific writer. Has made it easier for me to discuss these things with unintiated.
I was never into Boing Boing but it was really shared a lot back in the day.
I value adults using words that aren't attempts at being edgy while masquerading as a refined lexicon
I would say its a very niche group thats out of touch, but actually maybe Cory is on to something modern, he needed to become relevant to everyone that wasn't still reporting capital loss carryovers from 1999
He’s an author who influenced a wide range of technical people around the dot com era and iirc was an early proponent of the “we work for idiots” point of view.
Not quite the John Brunner of the late 90s but in the same neighborhood.
