Comment by bigmadshoe
15 hours ago
You can actually look this information up! For example, Instagram makes approx $2-50 ad revenue per user per year, depending on the region. Apparently it’s highest in North America.
So <$5 per month for someone in the developed world to keep using Instagram and stop being the product. If they redesigned the app around what’s best for users vs advertisers, it actually seems like a great deal, considering many people spend multiple hours per day on apps like these.
Of course this would get pretty expensive for all the services we use. But I personally would happily throw $100-$250 per year at my most used apps to stop being advertised to.
I think we are missing another angle of getting the data. Information is also power. Power to influence people (e.g. Cambridge Analytica). So paying will not stop the data collection. Actually I doubt anything will, unless people really push the regulators to do their job.
>> So <$5 per month for someone in the developed world to keep using Instagram and stop being the product.
This is only true if everyone does it; Why would they stop advertising for a tiny market, especially if they can get both? Why decrease the value of the tracking on a smaller userbase? Sales conversion says you'd have to charge $50 or $500 a month and you'd have a much smaller base; does social media like this even work with a fraction of the people?
If you are in the US and in a demographic who posts on Hacker News, $100-$250 is likely below your monthly revenue contribution to Google alone.
I’m pretty confident that at least 95% of HN users use adblocking so clearly the users are not worth much to the ad companies. Today I have absolutely zero ads on my devices.
I've never paid Google for anything. I usually get a check from them. What does Google sell? Office clone, ads, map api credits, search api credits, ad free youtube, ai credits sometimes phones and speakers that get bricked?
everyone of those things is built around data collection and tracking, which feeds their ad machine.
They sell your digitalSelf habits.
>... and stop being the product.
You will not stop being the product if you pay.
This is true. But they would at least design the app around maximizing user satisfaction with the service (to keep you paying), vs maximizing time spent on the app (i.e. through making it addictive) in order to increase ad revenue. The current incentives are perverse.
That's a nice idea, but then there are all of the times we've started paying for services to have an ad-free experience, only to then have them toss ads back into the mix.
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most-all of the algorithm-served content (not from my friends list) is ad content, even if it's not a meta-served ad.
all content (even those who make legitimate content, if they intend on making a living on content) is just ads packaged in fancy UGC. we've reached a point of no return for ads and user targeting
How's your YouTube Premium subscription?
Considering cancelling mine because they've introduced ads to it in the form of undismissable "purchase the product being discussed here" affiliate popups.
The popups are absolutely massive, too. It’s infuriating.
I don’t watch enough YouTube to warrant that. My elderly father on the other hand, who watches several hours of YouTube per day on his television, finally got YouTube premium and has found it to be life changing. The TV YouTube app regularly shows 2+ minutes of unskipable adds per video.
It's without a doubt one of the best value for money subscription available, except for electricity, water, a library subscription.
There's an endless amount of the highest quality videos available on YouTube. But you need to let the algorithm understand what you like by using the conveniently named "Like" and "Dislike" buttons.
That was a great deal when it came bundled with YouTube music. When they bizarrely tried to merge the two products so that when I was interested in watching videos, all I got was music video recommendations, it lost its lustre.
Now I would rather just pay for a couple Patreons. I heard there's some new pay to use YouTube thing out there that creators are pushing, I can't remember the name but I hopped on it and didn't see any extra content beyond what's offered on YouTube so I don't see the point.
Oh and before I got grayjay so I could have ad free casting of videos, premium was nice for when watching on the tv.
I pay for multiple patreons, too. I wish patreon wouldn’t be such a shitty website/app. It’s insane what basic features it’s missing.
You've missed the point of the comment that you've replied to. There's a well known adverse selection effect because the people who would pay for no ads are exactly the people who you most want to be able to serve ads to: people with lots of disposable income, and people who are power users who see the most ads.
As a result the actual amount that they would need to charge for an ad-free version is higher than the average revenue per user, possibly significantly so.
edit: you can look at YouTube premium for an example of this in practice. It's $16/mo for no ads. That's around 2-3x or more what their revenue per user is.
I also think the figure GP quoted are not US, but lumped together with depressed "developed" economies. US numbers should be a multiple of that.
Fair point. I think it depends on the person. I know plenty of people without much disposable income who still pay for several subscriptions.
That's also how you get to little disposable income. It's choices people make and that's their right but it does look odd occasionally.
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Advertisers don’t care about disposable income they care about spending habits even if the buyer is irresponsible and can’t afford it
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So they successfully blackmailed you.