Who's doing this to my internet? • Hacker News Board

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#151

Post by dlu » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 2:40 PM UTC

You know how in the innovator's dilemma, the point at which the new innovator gets a foothold is also the point where the old firm has peak profits? I think there's a similar thing where the best time to user a particular service is when the service is least profitable.

That's what the 2012 nostalgia sounds like to me. Back when Twitter was hosting revolutions, but still having issues with uptime (not to mention revenue). And Project Loon was alive, but mostly getting mocked by both Wall Street and charities/nonprofits (With Bill Gates being the most visible).

I also suspect 2012-2014 was when SoundCloud had huge amounts of traffic and, without any way of making money, at its least profitable. I have no actual evidence of this.

Personally, Project Loon always sounded like some crazy way of getting more people to use Google than actual charity. Like some weird extrapolation from, "the more people that use the Internet, the more money Google makes" and "Google's reached market saturation in current markets, we need growth in developing countries"

Going off memory for all this. Sorry if I get some details wrong about Innovators Dilemma, Twitter in 2012, Project Loon and such.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#152

Post by verbin217 » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 2:40 PM UTC

72deluxe wrote: post #127

freehunter wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the only way you could get to Hacker News was over a dial-up connection, would you switch to dial-up or would you just go to a different site that loads a broadband speed? Waiting two days to then have to deal with the unpleasant experience of getting a physical CD sucks. Wait two days, then rip the CD, then move the file to your phone... or just find other music you like that can be immediately downloaded. I love…

I've done that with my entire music collection. I have only ever bought one MP3 in my entire life. The rest of it is ripped from the CDs that I have bought. If the artist has gone to the effort of recording, mixing, mastering and designing sleeve notes and documenting who took part in the process, then that's really something worth buying. If we only consider music to be as valuable as background white noise, then do…

It's a generation with a deeply internalized notion of opportunity cost. That and given most people care primarily about the actual music the ratio in effort to ship/rip a cd versus download a torrent is enormous.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#153

Post by drzaiusapelord » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 2:42 PM UTC

norea-armozel wrote: post #134

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except we tried micropayments about a bazillion times and they have universally failed. People don't want yet another monthly bill, which is what micropayments would be. You'd "subscribe" to various sites and services and it would eat at your bitcoin or whatever that you would need to replenish monthly. Ads aren't as terrible as the average INTJ male makes them out to be. They're trivial to block as well. The OP's po…

Honestly, I don't think the new services are a problem. They fill a niche in the market. Streaming services are for folks who don't want to manage their own media (physical or digital). Those folks prefer ownership of access over ownership of media itself. In itself it's fine as something to supplement a media library. But I don't believe most people realize that once access to the media is lost due to economic reaso…

This is a minor hassle compared to the fairly significant cost savings. When I was a teen/early 20s I'd spend something like $50-100 per record store visit. I'd go at least quarterly, buy music at concerts, etc. I'd easily spend $500 or more annually in 1990s/early 2000's money. Discs were $12-15 for a very long time, singles were economically stupid, and dealing with crap like scratched discs or skipping in the car was the norm. Now, I'm paying $120 annually, in 2015 dollars, and every single song of that 30m library is available on my phone, which seamlessly connects to my car and other devices. I can also listen via the under-rated google music web player.

I don't know any young person without Google Music or Spotify. They're popular for a reason and not because we don't understand economics.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#154

Post by mcv » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 2:43 PM UTC

Frondo wrote: post #135

yc1010 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a better and safer online payment method its called Bitcoin But the existing financial and payment companies realize that this new technology makes them largely redundant hence they lobby and make it hard to acquire bitcoin for the average person with existing payment methods. The attitude of banks and regulators towards bitcoin is the same of the motor industry and governments towards the electric car, some…

People may also not like bitcoin because they want a democratic say in the design and operation of their currency. Bitcoin has economic features built into it that its users simply have no democratic redress to change, even if they wanted to. Power should be to the people, not some guy who likes deflation and baked that in years ago.

I don't think it's true that you can't change how bitcoin works. I'm no expert, but as I understand it, if more than half the network agrees with you, you can change it.

I think the main problem with bitcoin is that it doesn't scale, because every transaction has to be approved by the entire network. More payments and a bigger network means the number of validations goes up quadratically.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#155

Post by kjdal2001 » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 2:45 PM UTC

Buetol wrote: post #76

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just not following the connection from ads on the internet to a basic income. I've heard some good arguments for as well as against a basic income. I've never heard ads on the internet as one of them.

The connection is in the "why". Why do website switch to an ad-based revenue model ? (and so, against their initial will). Because the people running it needs money. If you have a basic income, it's easier for people to run websites for free without ads.

I would guess that the cost of running the business is higher than their personal expenses. Whatever the benefits of basic income, the idea isn't to subsidize a business.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#156

Post by Yhippa » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 2:45 PM UTC

We've officially hit peak "the Internet is terrible".

Whenever I see rants like this I immediately look for what the author's solution is. In this case it's "why hasn't someone come up with a solution yet?"

I don't know what the answer is. I will admit I do consume a lot of free (as in beer) content on the Internet all the time. When I realized BuzzFeed was just clickbait years ago I ... stopped going there. You have that option.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#157

Post by 72deluxe » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 2:46 PM UTC

aaronem wrote: post #148

72deluxe wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done that with my entire music collection. I have only ever bought one MP3 in my entire life. The rest of it is ripped from the CDs that I have bought. If the artist has gone to the effort of recording, mixing, mastering and designing sleeve notes and documenting who took part in the process, then that's really something worth buying. If we only consider music to be as valuable as background white noise, then do…

You really haven't noticed before now?

Perhaps, but I ignore it for long enough until it rears its head again and I feel disappointed, like now...

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#158

Post by Frondo » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 2:46 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #154

Frondo wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People may also not like bitcoin because they want a democratic say in the design and operation of their currency. Bitcoin has economic features built into it that its users simply have no democratic redress to change, even if they wanted to. Power should be to the people, not some guy who likes deflation and baked that in years ago.

I don't think it's true that you can't change how bitcoin works. I'm no expert, but as I understand it, if more than half the network agrees with you, you can change it. I think the main problem with bitcoin is that it doesn't scale, because every transaction has to be approved by the entire network. More payments and a bigger network means the number of validations goes up quadratically.

"change half the network" doesn't meet any definition of democratic access to power that I am familiar with.

People don't need to do a turn on a garbage collection route to vote on how their municipal garbage service is run.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#159

Post by wolfgke » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 2:47 PM UTC

golergka wrote: post #52

Users. Users always talk that they would love to pay. The problem is, they never do. They blog and write on forums about what they would like to see, but the things they write are always very, very different from what they actually do, according to the data. You remember how in this whole Reddit debacle Pao said that "most of users don't really care about this scandal" and got downvoted to hell? It could very well be…

> Users always talk that they would love to pay. The problem is, they never do.

Perhaps there are other reasons than not willing to. Say, for example, in Germany credit cards are not that common (other methods, like SEPA direct debit are used). Or they are in principle willing to pay, but not for the product that is offered (say, because of DRM or watermarks). Or they would pay, but don't trust their credit card number to some small, dubious website. Or they would pay, but are afraid of some hidden usage terms for the website that implies some kind of subscription (and thus future payments) that you don't want.

TLDR: There are lots of other reasons that can explain, why people would love to pay, but don't.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#160

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 2:48 PM UTC

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #92

Oh shut up already. We are, because people like us don't want to pay 99¢-$1.50 for songs that took time to compose, play, record, master, ship, and market, apps for mobile devices are quite literally a dime a dozen in app packs, games are at their lowest prices ever and the only sustainable model is DLC and subscriptions, and hundreds of petabytes of video storage are hosted by YouTube for no charge. It's 2015, grow…

Maybe we have too much expectation that you can make money directly doing creative works? People talk about entitlement of users, but this should work both way - when building a small app you shouldn't feel entitled to make a lot of money off it. That people may not want to buy your offerings at the price you want them to buy is the basic feature of a free market.

On the other hand, I believe we need to have a serious conversation about business models. Things like spamming with ads, massive tracking and micropayments should not be encouraged. Ponzi schemes are profitable too, and so is slave labour, and there are various forms of these and other business models that are legal but still shunned by the society. And just like those, chunking up your games into million paid DLCs, abusing gullible parents or turning the entire Internet into an ad cesspoool should not be things a self-respecting, moral person would consider doing.