Earlier quoted context omitted.
I released a browserbox variant many years ago that could ensure background playback on YouTube. Despite multiple posts here and on PH, it never gained any traction. It seemed people were simply not interested in overcoming no background playback for free on every platform (including mobile). Same time, one can appreciate the YouTube business: once you give something away for free, people absolutely loose their fucki…
It’s called “opportunity cost.” If you marry somebody and they suddenly become a totally different person and try to extort you a common reaction is to feel deceived and unhappy. They have cheated you in a sense of the opportunity cost of being able to marry someone else. That people might not understand that tells you something about them.
Anyway, in this case I think the analogy is a little overblown because the stakes are so different, but is revealing. You can way more easily divest of a software product than a marriage (presumably, tho that may differ locally). But, as in marriage, there's a interesting nuance: the stories we tell ourselves about what went wrong are so often one-sided, which lacks empathy for how the other person is probably just doing their best. A similar empahty mismatch with the entitlement of consumers who don't comprehend that the value they expect a person to provide them for free, should actually be compensated. As in, a free exchange.
That someone might confuse those could tell you 'something about them.' Or it could just be an honest mistake, on their part. That we're all likely to make.
Still the trigger to ape-brained fairness-wiring seems similar, and embodies that same one way empathy. Free and fair exchange, in commerce and relationships, should be based on more of a mutual empahty.
Thanks for bringing it up!