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Amazon Underground

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Re: Amazon Underground

#91

Post by jsprogrammer »

austenallred wrote: post #88
jsprogrammer wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the very least, I have to pay for it with my time, which is unrecoverable. If I can skip or otherwise ignore an ad, that is one thing, but forced interstitials is even more nebulous than a banner ad. It's not free if I have to spend time servicing your revenue stream, unless you reimburse me at my market rate for my time that you spent/wasted.

That gets into a very hairy definition of "free." How much did Hacker News pay you for the time you spent commenting? Probably not market rate. Yet we'd still probably say that Hacker News is free.

I've never seen an interstitial on HN. Have you?

Re: Amazon Underground

#92

Post by jsprogrammer »

hosh wrote: post #89
jsprogrammer wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is amazon really in a fight to the death with Google play? Can I buy cat food there?

It's less Google Play and more breaking the control Google has over the Android platform, despite Android being open-source and spread out across a number of manufacturers. Google Play is a critical piece of that control. The ads look like a way to defray that cost. I wonder what Samsung will try to do. Something similar or something from out of their own playbook?

Does Amazon actually provide compelling apps on their store? The comments here and this new advertising platform would suggest otherwise.

Re: Amazon Underground

#93

Post by austenallred »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #91
austenallred wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That gets into a very hairy definition of "free." How much did Hacker News pay you for the time you spent commenting? Probably not market rate. Yet we'd still probably say that Hacker News is free.

I've never seen an interstitial on HN. Have you?

So, it's free unless there's an interstitial ad? That seems like an awfully random place to draw the line.

Re: Amazon Underground

#94

Post by Animats »

Amazon's announcement probably violates FTC advertising rules.

"The FTC’s longstanding guidance to companies is that disclosures in their ads should be close to the claims to which they relate – not hidden or buried in unrelated details – and they should appear in a font that is easy to read and in a shade that stands out against the background. Disclosures for television ads should be on the screen long enough to be noticed, read, and understood, and other elements in the ads should not obscure or distract from the disclosures."

Every once in a while, the FTC does clamp down on this.[1]

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2014/09/opera...

Re: Amazon Underground

#95

Post by blacksmith_tb »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #80
biot wrote: post #76

I got an email from Microsoft today with this kind of "letter". See https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CNSgnyfWEAAvd9J.jpg:large I hope this doesn't become a trend, like using a picture of laminate flooring as a website background was a number of years back.

This actively discriminates against people who find certain typefaces difficult, those using assistive technologies, and those using mobile devices. It's also not machine-friendly, so search engines can't index it and Ctrl+F doesn't work. There's probably plenty of other reasons people can give for why plaintext is better. I wish people wouldn't do this. It's not even necessary to get the desired effect. CSS has had…

I am very sympathetic to your position, but CSS support in email clients is still surprisingly primitive (e.g. MS using Word's html rendering engine in Outlook). If you look at the source of most html emails that you get, they will be using tables for layout...

Re: Amazon Underground

#96

Post by personjerry »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #78
austenallred wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't mean that at all. Free (gratis), by definition, means you don't have to pay for anything. You don't spend dollars. Watching TV is free. Using Google and Facebook are free. You download free apps from the app store. And those all have ads. If you want to repurpose the word to mean "free with no ads" you can do that, but you can't expect others to hold to that definition.

So you think the Free Software Foundation should really be called the Ad-Supported Software Foundation? "Free" and "ad-supported" mean completely different things, and always have done.

You're confusing something entirely different here. "Free" in "Free Software Foundation" is free as in freedom to use for any purpose[0][1], rather than free price. You should not use this example to argue whether "free price" implies "ad-free".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software_movement

Re: Amazon Underground

#97

Post by avalaunch »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #91
austenallred wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That gets into a very hairy definition of "free." How much did Hacker News pay you for the time you spent commenting? Probably not market rate. Yet we'd still probably say that Hacker News is free.

I've never seen an interstitial on HN. Have you?

Yes, all the time. HN advertises jobs for y combinator companies and those ads are placed in between actual news stories.
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