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

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#281

Post by runejuhl » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 8:11 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #14

ohitsdom wrote: post #5

Really enjoyed this post, but I think some of her thoughts point to the root of the problem. > I started by trying to buy each of them separately. > $1.50 is a lot to pay for a song So she wanted to compensate each artist for the songs she loved, but only at an amount of her choosing? I'm assuming she was expecting 99 cents, so we're essentially haggling over $0.50 here. This shows why the advertising model is so pre…

The credit card situation is a completely separate concern, but a very big one. I still don't understand why there's no better international online payment method. There's a great Dutch online payment method, but that's only used by Dutch sites and a few really big ones (like Steam) that can afford to implement national payment systems. Why that system hasn't been implemented on a larger scale, I still don't know.

That's pretty much what I came here to say. I travel frequently, use my credit card everywhere, both online and offline, and I have never had any fraudulent charges to my cards.

Only once have I canceled a credit card before it expired, and that was after finding out that a popular hostel booking site let the hostel managers look up all credit card details, including the CVV number, for all bookings. I talked to the manager at the place we stayed for a few nights in Lima, Peru, and he told me that the site would only show the details once (or for a limited period), so they would always print the page. Of course they kept the printouts in a binder in the common area of the hostel...

I really don't understand why USA has such a big problem with credit card fraud, and how that problem became big enough that people would actually avoid paying online, with the exception of major chains/processors (Amazon, Paypal, etc).

Although, come to think of it, Denmark is a bit of an outlier. We have a national credit card, Dankort, that was conceived and implemented sometime in the 1980s (I'm a bit too young to remember the details...). It was written into law, and part of the law was that transactions should incur no costs on the user, which resulted in massive adoption, to the benefit of both the banks (who were proponents of the Dankort before its introduction) and the consumers.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#282

Post by eevilspock » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 8:30 PM UTC

mcphage wrote: post #265

eevilspock wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@Roodgorf: > It seems this could devolve into clickbait hell pretty quickly. Avoiding clickbait and rewarding actual quality is the point of the simple rating system. The garbage rating actually penalizes clickbait further. Clickbait happens today because of the advertising model, where the click not the content generates revenue.

> The garbage rating actually penalizes clickbait further. But the reason that clickbait works, is that people like clickbait. So I'm not sure you'd get much success with getting people to rate them "garbage" when they like them. Sure, maybe not en masse, but on an article-by-article level, people do like clickbait.

#2 Our users punish clickbait by refunding

In 2015, sometimes it feels like the best example of modern journalism is Buzzfeed. Go to any journalism conference, and their logo will be on many, many slides. As a journalist today you might feel that it’s more valued to write clickbaity headlines than to write pieces of well-researched journalism. But, Buzzfeed doesn’t work if people need to pay per article.

At Blendle we see this every day. Gossip magazines, for example, get much higher refund percentages than average (some up to 50% of purchases), as some of them are basically clickbait in print. People will only pay for content they find worth their money. So in Blendle, only quality journalism starts trending.

From: https://medium.com/on-blendle/blendle-a-radical-experiment-w...

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#283

Post by mcphage » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 9:03 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #268

mcphage wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The garbage rating actually penalizes clickbait further. But the reason that clickbait works, is that people like clickbait. So I'm not sure you'd get much success with getting people to rate them "garbage" when they like them. Sure, maybe not en masse, but on an article-by-article level, people do like clickbait.

> But the reason that clickbait works, is that people like clickbait. No, the reason that clickbait works is because the clickbait itself (which is the thing which is presented before you click the link) looks like something that the user is likely-enough to like that they are willing to click it to find out. The whole reason that its called clickbait is that that impression is often deceptive. So, getting feedback o…

> No, the reason that clickbait works is because the clickbait itself (which is the thing which is presented before you click the link) looks like something that the user is likely-enough to like that they are willing to click it to find out.

I think at this point if a user clicks on a link titled "12 Best Disney Princesses", they know exactly what they're going to get—and they click on it, because that's what they want to see.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#284

Post by mijustin » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 9:27 PM UTC

john_b wrote: post #164

Aqueous wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get what you're saying but that doesn't answer why a hybrid model isn't more common than it is. Show me ads to monetize my free consumption of your service, but if I'm willing to pay (as many definitely are), allow me to subscribe to disable the ads. Why isn't this model more common? Is it because advertisers tend not to want to advertise on a platform where people can opt out of their ads?

There was a post on HN last week where the author provided a reasonable answer (or at least I think so) to this question. The gist is that people who are willing to pay a subscription to disable ads are exactly the people that advertisers would like to target. When a service assembles a list of such people, the value of that list to the advertiser generally exceeds the sum of the individual payments provided by the s…

Do you have the link to the HN post you referred to?

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#285

Post by yc1010 » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 9:30 PM UTC

david-given wrote: post #180

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…

Last time I looked at Bitcoin, the big show-stoppers for me were: (a) the price was so variable that there was no way to know how much I was actually going to pay for anything; (b) turning real money to Bitcoin and back again was an utterly horrible experience (and expensive); (c) total lack of any recourse against fraud or theft, plus a rather scary security track record. Have these got any better recently?

a) Yes, likes of Circle and are solving this with USD balances and instant conversion to btc, also bitcoin has not been that volatile in last year

b) Coinbase a YC company and Circle mentioned already are doing great job on this end

c) Since bitcoin is basically digital equivalent of cash thats like asking for wings on a car. As for security I have a hardware Trezor wallet on my desk which keeps keys secure even if my computer is infected.

You see problems, I see opportunities for startups

The early internet had many problems, those companies that solved these problems are now household names.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#286

Post by yc1010 » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 9:33 PM UTC

Frondo wrote: post #146

yc1010 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes because the average person has power over the central banks Anyways it is sad being down-voted in technical forum by people who should better than most understand that bitcoin despite its faults is still a damned good online payment method especially when compared to existing alternatives. It does everything the OP i replied to wants. Anyways fuck this place, people use their votes as a way to not encourage conve…

I get to vote on the people who appoint the fed chief every so often. There is no mechanism, even theoretical, to put that democratic power in the hands of the citizen user of bitcoin. Edit: Wow you changed your comment a lot in the edit!

Good, bitcoin is not going to replace central banks, what it is a great online payment system not a replacement for world banking.

Some of us have no issues trusting cold hard maths, cryptography and computer science behind bitcoin which give so much certainty and such clearly defined rules for how the system works. As compared to some central bankers who have no issues with whole countries going down the drain (Greece) due to their policies which often change based on politics.

There sure as hell is no chance that trillions of bitcoins will suddenly appear out of thin air Fed style.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#287

Post by diamondlovesyou » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 9:41 PM UTC

awj wrote: post #270

pjc50 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, I'm actually OK with this in the medium term as a global wealth recycling scheme. Just as many of the private investors who built railways lost their money but gave us a useful network. We just need to keep promising vast wealth to investors as a result of global dominance while never letting any particular one take the whole cake.

The problem here is that there isn't too much recycling being done. In the process of trying to become profitable companies seem to destroy their products so thoroughly that there isn't much left to salvage by the end. It's like railway investors deciding that selling off all the metal from the left side of the track is the best way to recoup their losses. By the time that's done, there really isn't much of value lef…

The value isn't just in the final product; it's also present in the paycheques that paid for it etc.

That said, investors will find ways to spend their money regardless (it's in their best interests to do so).

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#288

Post by rickg17 » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 10:16 PM UTC

canadaduane wrote: post #280

jolan wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just reeks of being a whiny niche webfotainment consumer. > I've really loved listening to SoundCloud over the past couple years since mainstream radio sucks, for the same reasons that mainstream TV used to (needing to target the lowest common denominator so as to not upset advertisers.) Boohoo, now my favorite sites are going mainstream since I spend hours on their sites/consuming their bandwidth and they need to co…

I know you're trying to be helpful by pointing out what's wrong with the author's perspective, but I think you're missing the main point--that there is no business model today that aligns well the needs and "digital rights" of the individual. Eventually, all of the good intentions of internet startups are subsumed by their business models (usually an advertising model), which only incidentally aligns with some of the…

Sure there is. People can pay for the products made by a business. Individuals don't have a right to the products that others make; if they want to have those products and don't want ads, then they need to ante up and pay money for the product and that money needs to be enough that the creator of the product can keep creating more products and support the customers who've already bought.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#289

Post by TheGrimDerp1 » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 10:17 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #210

pi-err wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it says that there's an untapped opportunity for low friction, micro-transactions instead of "ads" or full-fledged purchases on unknown websites. It's clear by now that ads are for lazy. If your plan is to monetize your site with ads, today just like 10 years ago, you lost. Edit: surprised by the negativity on her reaction for _hacker_news. She's rebuffed by the $ and time investment for a single song ("unknown we…

I swear I remember some bank or company generating single-use credit card numbers specifically for this kind of concern. Did it fizzle out due to lack of use, or improved security on the banks' part, or am I just another victim of the Mandela/Berenstain effect?

a block-chained digital currency would work pretty well...

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#290

Post by Lazare » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 11:28 PM UTC

Let's imagine that someone started a "free pizza service". Every single day, rain or shine, a pizza gets delivered to users of the site. For free! Pretty good, right?

But then the VC money starts to run low, and after a few experiments with printing ads on the box, the company announces the end of the service.

It would be easy for me to then write an outraged blog post. I might say stuff like "who's doing this to my free pizza service?" I might plaintively suggest that there has to be a business model that allows free pizza to continue. I might even say that I'd pay a reasonable sum ($10/month, perhaps?) in order to keep the daily pizzas flowing.

But, you know, there's no right to free pizzas, it's not my free pizza service, there is no business model that makes free pizza viable, and my willingness to pay clearly does not extend to the point of actually covering anyone's costs.

Now, the author is talking about Soundcloud, not pizza. But I think the onus is on her to demonstrate that these examples are different.

> There have to be business models that allow the creativity of sites like XKCD, Reddit, SoundCloud, and Tumblr, to flourish.

1) No there doesn't "have to be". Free pizza is awesome, but it doesn't mean giving anyone who asks a daily free pizza is viable. Maybe SoundCloud's old ad-free model is viable; maybe it isn't. The answer doesn't depend on how much you wish it was true though. If you want to talk about business models but you're not going to talk about bandwidth costs and user growth and capex, you're not being serious.

2) Also, XKCD seems to be flourishing pretty damn well. So is Tumblr and Reddit, despite the overly-publicised prophecies of doom people keep tossing around. (Sure guys, this time you're all going to switch to Voat. No, I totally believe you.) The only one I don't know about is SoundCloud, and I'm pretty sure they'd love to be "failing" the way Reddit is failing. But sure, maybe they really can't make the numbers work. In which case, they're going to go under, but that doesn't tell us much about the internet, just about the economics of streaming media in a world where bandwidth is a scarce good.

What this article seems to be looking for is a solid example of people taking a profitable service that delighted users, and making it more profitable in a way that annoyed users. What it actually has is examples of people taking an unprofitable service and trying to find a way to make it viable so they can continue to serve users. The former would be a useful stepping off point to a discussion of greed and public services; the latter is not.