Comment by dylan604
8 months ago
> No, it's not for you...
This is key. Companies pushing apps is not for your benefit. It's so they can further monetize you right under your nose and with your full permission by accepting their EULA. This is just a furtherance of the if you don't pay for the product you are the product.
We have moved beyond that. Even if you pay, you’re usually still the product.
moving beyond is usually what happens when something is furtheranced
It is - from the company point of view.
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Companies still have to provide value for them to attract users. It's cynical to only look at the value the company gets and ignoring the value users and advertisers get.
I argue that this decade shows you do not have to provide value. You capture the market yester-decade and then you can hold the users hostage as you do any and everything to appeal to shareholders and advertisers.
This is indeed a short term strategy, but tech companies right now are thinking very short term.
How do you hold users hostage without providing them value?
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Agreed, this is post-capture monetization.
Take Reddit, which is one of the few sites mentioned here that I use. At least initially, the value provided is getting rid of the constant prompts to load the site in the Reddit app. Even though I use old.reddit.com, which doesn't have those prompts, there are times when it redirects me to the new website automatically. Does it offer value beyond getting rid of those messages? Perhaps, but I doubt that it is the type of value that I would be looking for.
How about the value of being able to talk to people who share the same hobby you do. Or the value of being able to see a community made wiki about some topic you are trying to learn about. Even being able to see cat pictures is valuable to people.
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Companies have to provide the perception of providing value.