Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Even if you’re paying, you’re still the product

odysee.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 221 posts

Re: Even if you’re paying, you’re still the product

#141

Post by only_as_i_fall »

pdpi wrote: post #9

The next to last paragraph bothers me: On Hackernews, they think it's "entitlement" to think that you can use free email and search engines and expect not to be tracked. The main problem with this line of thinking is that even if you had the option to pay for your email and for your search engine, some G**gle executive somewhere would mention during a meeting that they could add an extra $X million of revenue if they…

The entitlement argument has always been a strawman.

If I could pay Google $30 a month to use Google services without having to send any unescessary tracking info back to their servers AND I was still complaining you might have a point.

Re: Even if you’re paying, you’re still the product

#142

Post by mtnygard »

SyzygistSix wrote: post #117
poidos wrote: post #34

It gets grosser by the day. This is something that is endemic not just to ad-tech companies, but regular brick and mortar stores as well: it isn't enough to just be consuming, to actually be producing value for the business: they must monetize as many seconds of our attention as possible! If I'm buying gas, I'm being served ads via the little screen. If I'm at the grocery store, there's ads plastered onto my cart. Bu…

>If I'm buying gas, I'm being served ads via the little screen. The first time I saw that, my immediate reaction was to hit the screen. My second thought was to pour gas on it and light it on fire. I refuse to use any place that does this unless it is a last resort. It's not terribly common where I live (yet) but I assume it is becoming standard. It's enraging.

In my area, I have one option for fuel without ads. That's a place that has old analog pumps that still ding when the gallon dial rolls over. Obviously there's no pay at the pump.

If that store goes under or decides to modernize, then I will effectively not have a choice to get fuel without ads.

It's really frustrating. I want to let competition and the market sort it out, but when there's no variation in the options there's no real competition.

Re: Even if you’re paying, you’re still the product

#143

Post by acituan »

pdpi wrote: post #9

The next to last paragraph bothers me: On Hackernews, they think it's "entitlement" to think that you can use free email and search engines and expect not to be tracked. The main problem with this line of thinking is that even if you had the option to pay for your email and for your search engine, some G**gle executive somewhere would mention during a meeting that they could add an extra $X million of revenue if they…

> Expecting a valuable service with absolutely no consideration in return absolutely is a case of entitlement

Like open source software?

What you’re talking about is not entitlement, it is directed transactionality; “if I am using a service by x, I need to be the one personally compensating x”.

X could as well receive some form of compensation from elsewhere. Open source developers can be receiving satisfaction, recognition, even financial compensation without the end user. In fact that’s how charity, in its original sense of a virtue, works.

There is no inherent entitlement in assuming non-reciprocal charity. That’s a behavior baked in to humanity. I’d say expecting transactionality everywhere is the truncated, cynical view of human activity.

Re: Even if you’re paying, you’re still the product

#144

Post by k33l3r4pp »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #51

The whole article took about a minute to load because apparently it’s being loaded from some decentralized network called lbry. I would rather be the product and get a great user experience than a shitty user experience that sells itself based on some ideal that probably will not work economically in the long run. If a decentralized network you invested a lot of your life in becomes irrelevant, it’s worse than using…

> would rather be the product and get a great user experience than a shitty user experience that sells itself based on some ideal that probably will not work economically in the long run.

Well that depends on how many sheep we get. People don't care about principles until they are the ones being deplatformed, and abused. I sincerely hope that eventually you will figure out that the only way to have good things in a capitalistic society is to have competition. Odysee is that. Considering it has some high-profile you tubers switching over, I'd say it has potential to make Youtube irrelevant: it makes just as much money, and a decentralised system, means there isn't a single entity to bring it all down.

Re: Even if you’re paying, you’re still the product

#145

Post by D13Fd »

pdpi wrote: post #139
nonameiguess wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't seem like a fair representation. The quote there isn't saying you should expect totally free services. It's saying you have the right to expect not to be tracked . Advertising up until 20 years ago relied entirely upon context and behavioral and engagement studies were conducted on an opt-in basis on Nielsen families and focus groups composed either of volunteers or people being compensated for participa…

> Tracking is becoming less effective, and the only recourse they have is stuffing even more ads everywhere to make up for the lost revenue from targeting. This is great, because you're not affected if you have uBlock Origin. If you don't, install it right now. That's part of the context, and pretty much goes in the direction of "I just don't want any advertising at all". I can sympathise, but we need to find a way t…

This is actually what bothered me the most about the article.

If we all install add blockers, content producers can't make money.

Re: Even if you’re paying, you’re still the product

#146

Post by badloginnew »

Cederfjard wrote: post #110
hobs wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty simple - if its not profitable to run a service without spying on your users then it should simply not be run. That's it!

OK, that’s how you feel, and your choice. What do you think about people who wouldn’t mind being spied on in exchange for free or cheaper services? I’m personally with you, by the way, but I think it’s worth pointing out that it’s not the only valid position.

People who want to be spied on have the freedom to move to North Korea. I’d be ok with using tax dollars to help them. They’d still complain that people here have entitled attitudes about freedom, but they are free to choose a different way.

Re: Even if you’re paying, you’re still the product

#147

Post by emodendroket »

coldtea wrote: post #129
Cederfjard wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, that’s how you feel, and your choice. What do you think about people who wouldn’t mind being spied on in exchange for free or cheaper services? I’m personally with you, by the way, but I think it’s worth pointing out that it’s not the only valid position.

> OK, that’s how you feel, and your choice. What do you think about people who wouldn’t mind being spied on in exchange for free or cheaper services? I'd feel like there's no universal God-given social contract that says they have a "right" to this, so I'd suggest we ban it anyways (just like they're free to suggest to allow it).

Couldn't you make the same argument about one's "right" to never be the subject of automated data collection?

Re: Even if you’re paying, you’re still the product

#148

Post by emodendroket »

hobs wrote: post #123
Cederfjard wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, that’s how you feel, and your choice. What do you think about people who wouldn’t mind being spied on in exchange for free or cheaper services? I’m personally with you, by the way, but I think it’s worth pointing out that it’s not the only valid position.

It's not the only valid position, its just the only position that doesn't allow giant corporations to use their power to coerce people with no money to give up their agency.

They can probably find other ways.

Re: Even if you’re paying, you’re still the product

#149

Post by tendstofortytwo »

emodendroket wrote: post #42
nonameiguess wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't seem like a fair representation. The quote there isn't saying you should expect totally free services. It's saying you have the right to expect not to be tracked . Advertising up until 20 years ago relied entirely upon context and behavioral and engagement studies were conducted on an opt-in basis on Nielsen families and focus groups composed either of volunteers or people being compensated for participa…

If you set up Gmail on your phone you’re not being advertised to at all when you check your mail. It seems hard to imagine any way providing that service for free would be worth their while if they couldn’t harvest the data.

I do see advertisements on the Gmail mobile app though. They're never in the primary view, but the automatic categorizations (Promotions, Social, Updates) generally have them.

Re: Even if you’re paying, you’re still the product

#150

Post by gerbilly »

We’ve squandered the ‘personal’ part of personal computing.

A lot of this tracking nonsense is enabled by services which rely on server side processing.

For example somewhere lower down someone mentioned an AI assitant to extract todos from your emails.

This might not be so bad if the AI was running on your machine. But of course it’s always running on some cloud server.

For another example, any of those Alexa like devices have to analyse your voice input serverside. If it could do text to speech with local processing then it would be possible to make the device much more respectful of your privacy.

If you want total contol over your data, you have to use programs that can be used totally offline.

Regrettably everything is subscription now. Hold on to your perpetually licenced software if you still have any!

Post reply on HN