Comment by AnthonyMouse
1 day ago
This is the kind of "business tactic" they used to teach about in DARE rather than business school.
Porn companies don't have any kind of monopoly or brand loyalty and the ones shady enough to do something like that are exactly the ones that won't still be in business by the time today's kids are adults, so anyone doing it wouldn't be the one deriving a benefit from it.
Even normal companies don't care about customers decades from now because the thing they do teach in business school is discount rates. A dollar in 10 years is worth less than half that today. Likewise, managers get bonuses and promotions on the basis of present-day profits rather than something that happens a generation from now when they're likely to be at a different company anyway.
The premise that they're expected to do that on a widespread basis is ridiculous. Instead it will be one fool who writes something along those lines in an email which is then published because media companies love publishing anything which is bad PR for someone they don't like, regardless of whether it was ever widely implemented or implemented at all. It isn't an actual business strategy for real businesses.
Decades? Generation? Make a good argument if you are going to make one. We are talking a few years here, say 12, 14, 16 to 18, and they get a steady customer.
The premise of "steady customer" is that they stick with you. Which, to begin with, is implausible because there are so many competing services, and even if it actually happened and that person subscribed to your service until they're 80 years old, those years are decades away.
Companies think both at a micro and macro scale. They chase individuals but they are also very interested in seeing the entire landscape be more interested in whatever they are selling. If porn peddlers were only targeting "that creepy uncle", and not thinking beyond that, the porn industry would not have been as big as it is today. The financial insentive is very real, and so is the desire to keep porn accessible to kids.