Nah. We should normalize public services and resources to develop knowledge and tools, that are made freely available. Provide incentive programs and reward those that take on such initiatives.
There are many such services where I'm from. And the feeling when using them is refreshing. You're not looking for an ulterior motive to be misinformed. They're responsive as they don't load a 10 MiB JavaScript blob to track your interactions "for marketing".
The software solution and hosting is not remotely as expensive as the lab work needed to gather the nutritional information.
If this was made by a private company, it would be a subscription service, without a doubt. You'd find certain brands but not others because of deals under the table. It would have user profiles for collecting and selling data, not to mention integration with fitness and weight loss services. You might also wonder if part of the data is incorrect because of all that darn expensive lab analysis. Heck, maybe some CTO figured they could "predict" this information with an LLM.
Here, it is covered by taxes, benefit all, full page load in about 0.2 seconds (or 0.5 seconds for nutritional value). This is how the internet could be.
So, steal from everyone (taxation) whether they want to support or use government-run Facebook, give the money to government-run Facebook, and everything will be great because Government?
What incentive does that mechanism have to spur innovation for government-run Facebook? Does the government fund two Facebooks and scale funding based on market share? Or, like what virtually always happens in government, does it metastasize, realize it's actual "customer" isn't its "users" but is actually the government itself, and act accordingly to protect and grow its own budget?
Everything about a subscription model is better. If it sucks, don't pay for it, and if no one thinks its a worthwhile bargain then they run out of money and it dies. Efficient. If people do like it, then great.
Not sure to what extend, if at all, I should engage here, as you do have some strong preconceptions that probably makes it less likely productive.
> Steal from everyone (taxation) [...] give the money to government-run Facebook, and everything will be great because Government
Not touching this. As an exercise, take it upon yourself to figure out how much it cost per meter (or, I assume more familiar to you -- football field) for the road you last used, and where that money came from.
> government-run Facebook?
Yes. But, it depends what you think Facebook is, which I'm assuming isn't what Meta does with Facebook. They are in the business of collecting, profiling, and selling to data brokers, and influence to foreign countries or private interests. All of this is of negative value to both end user and society. In a world with a "government run Facebook", it wouldn't exist.
So what is the service Facebook actually provides then? A way to manage communities and events. A way to find, connect, and communicate with others. And it would absolutely be a good case for something that could easily surpass the value of services provided by "facebook", if done right, without incentive beyond making good services.
Not sure if you've noticed or paid much attention. None of the most important services do product development guided by <improving the service>. Google wouldn't have replaced Play Music. Your search result might be immediately useful but that would make you move on. I'd also wager that your YouTube client doesn't automatically skip the sponsor segments.
I'll grab onto the very first thing you've said as it seems to be a basis for the rest - taxation isn't fun, but low taxes don't guarantee anything. Look at Hong Kong - one of the lowest tax rates in the world, but it doesn't really mean the citizens have more free income. The government still needs money to function, and the main source is land sales instead. The landlords have taken over instead and insane rent for smallest places is now the actual tax. And then it's reflected further in the price of the food or products, where rent is the biggest business expense.
The money just goes into private hands instead. Is that really the better option here? Innovation isn't necessary if you have a de facto monopoly - and frankly, Facebook is a good example; nothing it has done in 10 years was actually an improvement to the service or humanity.
It would be alright to socialize the good parts and get rid of the bad ones.
All that achieves is companies introducing ads to boost revenue for next quarter's earnings.
For a concrete example: LINE (most widely-used messaging app in Japan) has paid subscriptions, and even the highest tier subscription doesn't reduce ads. Other services (e.g. YouTube Premium) reduce ads, but do not eliminate them, no matter how much you pay.
Also, they still do the stalky part. Even if the paid service does remove the manifestation of ads on that site/service, chances are the tracking still happens so they can immediately target if you stop paying (instead of resuming collection at that point) and so the information can potentially be sold to 3rd parties or new owners (if the site/service itself is sold) or accidentally leaked (directly due to dumb decisions like sending the wrong data somewhere or indirectly due to dumb decisions resulting in poor security a black-hat can exploit).
> Other services (e.g. YouTube Premium) reduce ads, but do not eliminate them, no matter how much you pay.
Hmm curious to know where you live that you still get Youtube-supplied ads with YT Premium?
Because "ad-free" is literally the headline feature.
Unless you're talking about in-video ads and sponsorships added in by the video creators themselves, and then that's not something in YT's control (although they provide the "skip commonly skipped sections" feature in Premium that helps with this).
I pay for content: gig and cinema tickets, merch and digital albums from artists I like or know. I buy loads of books, magazines, digital and physical games, art I can hang on my wall. I've even started a bit of a CD collection.
At times I've had Spotify, Netflix and Mubi subscriptions. As a UK-resident with a TV, I pay for the BBC.
I feel I more than adequately contribute to cultural production.
In some ways, the current situation suits me fine. I take the free stuff where I'm technically capable. I'll block the ads, pirate to my hearts content, use yt-dlp, BPC, userscripts.
I'm not not paying for stuff, but I've enough financial pressures already, thank you very much. I don't see why I should send all my money to (mostly) US corporations, who've farmed and resold user-generated content.
Go to a better movie theater and they don’t do that. Alamo Drafthouse movies have the old please keep quiet message, but if you show up 5 minutes late you’re missing part of the movie if they even let you in.
Part of this is baked into the experience though, if "ads" here are trailers for upcoming films. I don't know if theaters are now showing ads for products, I haven't been in forever.
> Decades of ad propaganda have tricked people into seeing them as something 'normal'.
also wait, we're talking about a US company, should we be paying a US company, for "content"? Is all "content" produced by these US megacorps, I don't think so, they're purely extractive
what are you gonna do, make more Marvel movies? lol
We are already paying for the externalities from ad tech. We’ve got entire worlds of predatory information behavior and near zero defenses for humans.
If you are on HN, you hopefully know enough to keep yourself clean and safe, but the rest of humanity is essentially getting mugged, defrauded and addicted 24/7.
You think Meta would spy less on us and show us less ads if we payed to access their services ? They would just keep doing what they've been doing for ages and they would have even more money to keep their enshitification going.
We are already paying too much for all the services with subscription. Like Spotify, Netflix and others...
It could be made a question of legislation. If it was forbidden, and the "cost of business" too high for them to dare, then it can work. We would need to do more than touch them with the satin gloves we are using now though.
What do you think the constant reminders of "hey hey hey, use these autogenerated vibes based playlists that are more profitable to us because we filled them with AI generated fake artists" are?
Meanwhile spotify also has at least two autogenerated playlists of the songs you have chosen to play more than a few times. Literally "Here's the songs you recently took an interest in", and they do not fill your front page with that autogenerated playlist!
Because that copy they are shoving in your face is not Informing you of useful Features or Inviting you to try something we made, but is instead managed by the marketing department.
If you turn off personalised ads in the EU for insta they hijack your scrolling to give you "ad breaks" which is actually a really neat feature because it reminds me I've started doom scrolling and I close the app
I for one pay for content I enjoy, when it's reasonably priced and available to pay for. Two sources of print journalism, a few dozen patreons, paid youtube, etc - not to mention one-off purchases like books. [1]
And I'd encourage other people who can afford to, to do the same.
I'm not sure how scalable my approach is within the status quo, though - I've never seen a subscribers-only article go viral on social media, and almost all of my subscriptions began with me enjoying a generous free tier. And I've tried a number of micropayment systems but none of them seem poised to take off for various reasons.
I will add though, that the freemium model does not necessarily have to cease existing. Some platform for written articles can have articles available at no cost, and then put a paywall in front of other articles. I don't see the problem with that. It will be a careful balancing act of content creators, how much is in the freemium section, so that they attract a sufficient number of readers/fans/supporters.
Only if we can also normalize not double-dipping via payment and ads. Too often, paying money to avoid "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product" just turns it into "You're paying for the product and you're still the product".
How can we normalise it even MORE? We are paying for digital products MONTHLY and they get more expensive and lose features AND we have to watch the ads too.
What does "normalize" mean here? I don't think consumers have to do anything in this situation. If a business model isn't making enough money, it's on the business to change.
If someday Google puts Youtube behind a hard paywall, no more "free with ads," I'd pay for it. I already pay for Nebula. But if I can get around the ads with uBlock, why wouldn't I? Just on principle? Because it's not fair that their business model doesn't make the revenue they want?
There is a large cohort of people who will complain about ads but also don't want to pay. My little microSaaS is monetised with ads but I offer option to pay if you don't like the ads. Still get plenty of complaints about the ads.
Yes. Anyone who has ever shipped a free mobile app can tell you that a $1 "remove all ads for life" offer will convert very poorly, even on sticky apps that people use every day.
(Disclosure: my employer owns an ad network. Opinions my own.)
Nah. We should normalize public services and resources to develop knowledge and tools, that are made freely available. Provide incentive programs and reward those that take on such initiatives.
There are many such services where I'm from. And the feeling when using them is refreshing. You're not looking for an ulterior motive to be misinformed. They're responsive as they don't load a 10 MiB JavaScript blob to track your interactions "for marketing".
As an example, consider a service that gives you nutritional information of food. https://www.matvaretabellen.no/en/
The software solution and hosting is not remotely as expensive as the lab work needed to gather the nutritional information.
If this was made by a private company, it would be a subscription service, without a doubt. You'd find certain brands but not others because of deals under the table. It would have user profiles for collecting and selling data, not to mention integration with fitness and weight loss services. You might also wonder if part of the data is incorrect because of all that darn expensive lab analysis. Heck, maybe some CTO figured they could "predict" this information with an LLM.
Here, it is covered by taxes, benefit all, full page load in about 0.2 seconds (or 0.5 seconds for nutritional value). This is how the internet could be.
So, steal from everyone (taxation) whether they want to support or use government-run Facebook, give the money to government-run Facebook, and everything will be great because Government?
What incentive does that mechanism have to spur innovation for government-run Facebook? Does the government fund two Facebooks and scale funding based on market share? Or, like what virtually always happens in government, does it metastasize, realize it's actual "customer" isn't its "users" but is actually the government itself, and act accordingly to protect and grow its own budget?
Everything about a subscription model is better. If it sucks, don't pay for it, and if no one thinks its a worthwhile bargain then they run out of money and it dies. Efficient. If people do like it, then great.
Not sure to what extend, if at all, I should engage here, as you do have some strong preconceptions that probably makes it less likely productive.
> Steal from everyone (taxation) [...] give the money to government-run Facebook, and everything will be great because Government
Not touching this. As an exercise, take it upon yourself to figure out how much it cost per meter (or, I assume more familiar to you -- football field) for the road you last used, and where that money came from.
> government-run Facebook?
Yes. But, it depends what you think Facebook is, which I'm assuming isn't what Meta does with Facebook. They are in the business of collecting, profiling, and selling to data brokers, and influence to foreign countries or private interests. All of this is of negative value to both end user and society. In a world with a "government run Facebook", it wouldn't exist.
So what is the service Facebook actually provides then? A way to manage communities and events. A way to find, connect, and communicate with others. And it would absolutely be a good case for something that could easily surpass the value of services provided by "facebook", if done right, without incentive beyond making good services.
Not sure if you've noticed or paid much attention. None of the most important services do product development guided by <improving the service>. Google wouldn't have replaced Play Music. Your search result might be immediately useful but that would make you move on. I'd also wager that your YouTube client doesn't automatically skip the sponsor segments.
23 replies →
I'll grab onto the very first thing you've said as it seems to be a basis for the rest - taxation isn't fun, but low taxes don't guarantee anything. Look at Hong Kong - one of the lowest tax rates in the world, but it doesn't really mean the citizens have more free income. The government still needs money to function, and the main source is land sales instead. The landlords have taken over instead and insane rent for smallest places is now the actual tax. And then it's reflected further in the price of the food or products, where rent is the biggest business expense.
The money just goes into private hands instead. Is that really the better option here? Innovation isn't necessary if you have a de facto monopoly - and frankly, Facebook is a good example; nothing it has done in 10 years was actually an improvement to the service or humanity.
It would be alright to socialize the good parts and get rid of the bad ones.
Yes. We should stop listening to idiots that say taxation is theft.
1 reply →
All that achieves is companies introducing ads to boost revenue for next quarter's earnings.
For a concrete example: LINE (most widely-used messaging app in Japan) has paid subscriptions, and even the highest tier subscription doesn't reduce ads. Other services (e.g. YouTube Premium) reduce ads, but do not eliminate them, no matter how much you pay.
Also, they still do the stalky part. Even if the paid service does remove the manifestation of ads on that site/service, chances are the tracking still happens so they can immediately target if you stop paying (instead of resuming collection at that point) and so the information can potentially be sold to 3rd parties or new owners (if the site/service itself is sold) or accidentally leaked (directly due to dumb decisions like sending the wrong data somewhere or indirectly due to dumb decisions resulting in poor security a black-hat can exploit).
> Other services (e.g. YouTube Premium) reduce ads, but do not eliminate them, no matter how much you pay.
Hmm curious to know where you live that you still get Youtube-supplied ads with YT Premium?
Because "ad-free" is literally the headline feature.
Unless you're talking about in-video ads and sponsorships added in by the video creators themselves, and then that's not something in YT's control (although they provide the "skip commonly skipped sections" feature in Premium that helps with this).
it is something in YTs control
they can require ad and sponsor-free copies of videos to be uploaded in order to get YT premium revenue.
they control the platform. that they choose not to make the premium experience ad free is up to them
1 reply →
Exactly this. The people willing to pay a subscription are also the most valuable to advertisers.
I pay for content: gig and cinema tickets, merch and digital albums from artists I like or know. I buy loads of books, magazines, digital and physical games, art I can hang on my wall. I've even started a bit of a CD collection.
At times I've had Spotify, Netflix and Mubi subscriptions. As a UK-resident with a TV, I pay for the BBC.
I feel I more than adequately contribute to cultural production.
In some ways, the current situation suits me fine. I take the free stuff where I'm technically capable. I'll block the ads, pirate to my hearts content, use yt-dlp, BPC, userscripts.
I'm not not paying for stuff, but I've enough financial pressures already, thank you very much. I don't see why I should send all my money to (mostly) US corporations, who've farmed and resold user-generated content.
Paying for quality content has been normalized, the price floor for payment is way above what Facebook and the vast majority of Web content offers.
That’s why movies and AAA games can clear a billion dollars, but the internet is still dependent on people failing to install ad blockers.
> That’s why movies (...) can clear a billion dollars,
And yet somehow I still get 30 minutes of ads before a watching a goddamn movie in a cinema.
Go to a better movie theater and they don’t do that. Alamo Drafthouse movies have the old please keep quiet message, but if you show up 5 minutes late you’re missing part of the movie if they even let you in.
1 reply →
Part of this is baked into the experience though, if "ads" here are trailers for upcoming films. I don't know if theaters are now showing ads for products, I haven't been in forever.
1 reply →
Theatres need a piece of the pie too :^)
1 reply →
Just take your seat 30mins later.
5 replies →
You must have grown up on the Internet during the
> Decades of ad propaganda have tricked people into seeing them as something 'normal'.
also wait, we're talking about a US company, should we be paying a US company, for "content"? Is all "content" produced by these US megacorps, I don't think so, they're purely extractive
what are you gonna do, make more Marvel movies? lol
Sure - why not ?
We are already paying for the externalities from ad tech. We’ve got entire worlds of predatory information behavior and near zero defenses for humans.
If you are on HN, you hopefully know enough to keep yourself clean and safe, but the rest of humanity is essentially getting mugged, defrauded and addicted 24/7.
You think Meta would spy less on us and show us less ads if we payed to access their services ? They would just keep doing what they've been doing for ages and they would have even more money to keep their enshitification going.
We are already paying too much for all the services with subscription. Like Spotify, Netflix and others...
It could be made a question of legislation. If it was forbidden, and the "cost of business" too high for them to dare, then it can work. We would need to do more than touch them with the satin gloves we are using now though.
If we say ads are an attack on our attention, time and money - then it’s a different ball game entirely.
Their incentives would be aligned to users, not advertisers.
The ideological changes alone would be like living in a different world entirely.
Heck, maybe micropayments would become viable at that point.
Plenty of other services (like Spotify) stop showing you ads if you pay them enough money.
Until they decide that ads can give some profit on top of your payment. See: youtube [0], Windows, Apple [1].
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433
1 reply →
I don't think that actually counts as "paying for content". The musicians make the "content", and Spotify pays all but the biggest ones a pittance.
That's more like "paying to not see ads" than "paying for content".
Spotify shoves podcast ads in your face.
Amazon does the same with product ads.
What do you think the constant reminders of "hey hey hey, use these autogenerated vibes based playlists that are more profitable to us because we filled them with AI generated fake artists" are?
Meanwhile spotify also has at least two autogenerated playlists of the songs you have chosen to play more than a few times. Literally "Here's the songs you recently took an interest in", and they do not fill your front page with that autogenerated playlist!
Because that copy they are shoving in your face is not Informing you of useful Features or Inviting you to try something we made, but is instead managed by the marketing department.
If such a plan exists its always just a temporary situation until they add ads back in to keep the line going up.
They stop showing ads if you pay for Instagram in the EU.
However they do not stop tracking you.
If you turn off personalised ads in the EU for insta they hijack your scrolling to give you "ad breaks" which is actually a really neat feature because it reminds me I've started doom scrolling and I close the app
1 reply →
I for one pay for content I enjoy, when it's reasonably priced and available to pay for. Two sources of print journalism, a few dozen patreons, paid youtube, etc - not to mention one-off purchases like books. [1]
And I'd encourage other people who can afford to, to do the same.
I'm not sure how scalable my approach is within the status quo, though - I've never seen a subscribers-only article go viral on social media, and almost all of my subscriptions began with me enjoying a generous free tier. And I've tried a number of micropayment systems but none of them seem poised to take off for various reasons.
[1] I don't pay for facebook, because fuck 'em
Same here.
I will add though, that the freemium model does not necessarily have to cease existing. Some platform for written articles can have articles available at no cost, and then put a paywall in front of other articles. I don't see the problem with that. It will be a careful balancing act of content creators, how much is in the freemium section, so that they attract a sufficient number of readers/fans/supporters.
Only if we can also normalize not double-dipping via payment and ads. Too often, paying money to avoid "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product" just turns it into "You're paying for the product and you're still the product".
How can we normalise it even MORE? We are paying for digital products MONTHLY and they get more expensive and lose features AND we have to watch the ads too.
What more do you want??
What does "normalize" mean here? I don't think consumers have to do anything in this situation. If a business model isn't making enough money, it's on the business to change.
If someday Google puts Youtube behind a hard paywall, no more "free with ads," I'd pay for it. I already pay for Nebula. But if I can get around the ads with uBlock, why wouldn't I? Just on principle? Because it's not fair that their business model doesn't make the revenue they want?
There is a large cohort of people who will complain about ads but also don't want to pay. My little microSaaS is monetised with ads but I offer option to pay if you don't like the ads. Still get plenty of complaints about the ads.
Yes. Anyone who has ever shipped a free mobile app can tell you that a $1 "remove all ads for life" offer will convert very poorly, even on sticky apps that people use every day.
(Disclosure: my employer owns an ad network. Opinions my own.)