Engineered Addictions • Hacker News Board

Re: Engineered Addictions

#151

Post by dimal » Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 9:09 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #117

smikhanov wrote: post #102

Good people of HN, could anyone tell me why buying an MVP of a social network for $10K from a Belarusian contractor on Upwork (it couldn’t cost much more, it’s like five SQL tables and a web CRUD) and then charging users $2/month to use it wouldn’t work? Why does the author need to moan about how morally destructive it was to raise VC? Just run your social network from your bedroom, while asking ChatGPT how to rewrit…

> and then charging users $2/month to use it wouldn’t work? Commenters all across the internet will say they’d pay good money for a site that does something specific that sounds like a good idea. Then when the site is built, you will discover that they will not, in fact, pay any money for it at all. You will continue to add the features they request and the goalposts will continue to move. Social networks are even mo…

People pay for software all the time. Hell I pay $30/month for a fucking email client (Superhuman). But no one has tried it for a social network. I think the problem is that people think a social network is worthless unless you hit Twitter scale, but perhaps lots of smaller, focused social networks at $2/pop could work. People are now saying that Discord is being enshittified, right on schedule. Maybe there's an opportunity to poach some communities.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#152

Post by moffkalast » Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 9:18 PM UTC

klik99 wrote: post #20

> Then it raised venture capital, hit scale, and needed to hit growth numbers and meet quarterly metric goals. The focus shifted from “authenticity” to “daily active users.” Having spent a few years in the VC world I have been increasingly convinced outside investment is the biggest reason why companies lose their morals. The legal obligation to represent shareholders erodes morality. When the people running these co…

Of course VC loan sharking is a major part of the problem. But it's also tiring reading blog after blog of people who say they want to do the right things and do them right or whatever the trendy thing is that month, all as a thinly veiled pretence to get as much funding from whoever wants to give it to them and try to make themselves the next Zuckerberg or Bezos.

If people actually believed in something they'd make it open source or a non-profit, not a convenient vehicle for personal enrichment. Imagine if Wikipedia was a for-profit startup, it would've eventually ended up as an unusable cesspool of advertising.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#153

Post by rufus_foreman » Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 9:24 PM UTC

The problem is not the apps, the problem is the users. Which means the problem is human nature.

Make a photography site for people to share photographs and it will inevitably turn into a site for people to share selfies of them pretending to live a life that they do not actually live and can not actually afford, but which you will inevitably compare yourself against.

Make a site for people to share opinions and it will inevitably be dominated by one particular group of users that will shame anyone with any opinion at all that diverges from the tiny area of acceptable opinion.

The problem is not the tools that the users have. The problem is not the engineers. The problem is that people are being giving exactly what they want. The problem is right there in the mirror.

There are no solutions.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#154

Post by ambicapter » Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 9:32 PM UTC

HWR_14 wrote: post #34

ambicapter wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By...not competing? As long as you're profitable (read: your expenses are lower than your incomes), what does competing to be "the best" (whatever that even means) provide you?

In many segments, especially ones served digitally, only one or a few companies will survive. It's very much "grow or die".

That's a narrative that makes no sense. If a company is profitable, it doesn't "die". If customers like your product and their friends are on your platform, they have no reason to leave to another.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#155

Post by Aurornis » Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 9:34 PM UTC

dimal wrote: post #151

Aurornis wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and then charging users $2/month to use it wouldn’t work? Commenters all across the internet will say they’d pay good money for a site that does something specific that sounds like a good idea. Then when the site is built, you will discover that they will not, in fact, pay any money for it at all. You will continue to add the features they request and the goalposts will continue to move. Social networks are even mo…

People pay for software all the time. Hell I pay $30/month for a fucking email client (Superhuman). But no one has tried it for a social network. I think the problem is that people think a social network is worthless unless you hit Twitter scale, but perhaps lots of smaller, focused social networks at $2/pop could work. People are now saying that Discord is being enshittified, right on schedule. Maybe there's an oppo…

> People pay for software all the time.

Well obviously some people would pay. The hurdle that a company needs to clear is getting enough people to pay to support both an engineering staff and the infrastructure costs.

Do the math on how many people are necessary to run a web site with on-call rotation, minimum moderation, and someone to run the business. The number of $2/month subscription required to make that work is prohbitively high.

> but perhaps lots of smaller, focused social networks at $2/pop could work

Even large, free, well-funded social networks are failing to get significant traction or running into echo chamber problems (Bluesky).

I've been hearing for years that a paid social network would work, but if the unpaid social network competitors can't get any traction, what makes you think adding a $2/month signup hurdle would improve the situation?

If you want to see a real-world example of people squirming out of their claims that they'd pay for ad-free services, take a look at any HN thread discussing YouTube premium or their ad-block evasion efforts. The price for ad-free YouTube is reasonable for as much as people watch it, yet when cornered the same audiences who claimed they'd pay for an ad-free version suddenly come up with a multitude of new excuses for why they're refusing to pay. My personal favorite claim (which invariably surfaces in every thread) is when people say they would happily pay for YouTube premium if they weren't so aggressive about adblockers.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#156

Post by smikhanov » Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 9:35 PM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #145

Aurornis wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and then charging users $2/month to use it wouldn’t work? Commenters all across the internet will say they’d pay good money for a site that does something specific that sounds like a good idea. Then when the site is built, you will discover that they will not, in fact, pay any money for it at all. You will continue to add the features they request and the goalposts will continue to move. Social networks are even mo…

Kagi just passed 50k users: https://kagi.com/stats?stat=members They claim to be profitable, but the TAM for services people are used to thinking of as "free" is small.

Sorry to mumble, I'll add one more thing. Back in 2013, I was running a productivity startup, and we tried courting Evernote into acquiring us (unsuccessfully, though damn we were a good match). I remember those times vividly: Evernote raises a sizeable fraction of a billion in funding in several rounds, employs like 400 people, their CEO goes to places like Le Web or whatever and expatiates from stage about building a "100 year company".

Fast forward to 2022: Evernote itself is acquired by a random app studio, and the whole service is now run by something like a dozen people. The CEO of what used to be a "100 year company" moved on.

I thought about this a lot. They never needed those 400 employees, even in 2013, it was absolutely possible to run the same service with a tiny team, it's just that the people at the company's top would be completely different people with completely different aptitude towards building their businesses. It's only if you really, really want to be on stage at Le Web, then you go to investors over and over again and convince them and yourself that a note-taking app needs 400 employees, and you're building a company as a product, not a product as a product.

Looks like the author of the original article here also didn't actually want to build a social network business but rather wants to be in the hothouse of Silicon Valley. Well, good luck to them.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#157

Post by crawfordcomeaux » Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 9:37 PM UTC

wonderwonder wrote: post #133

kelseyfrog wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had to choose between common good and shareholder value all else being equal, I'd choose common good every time. We should be suspicious of games that favor shareholder value over common good and repair them. Of course this is harder than it sounds, but letting the person with the most money in a Monopoly game also set the rules is absurd and and obviously wrong. Wrong even without having a consensus reality on…

I hear you but disagree. Who decides what the common good is? You end up with companies moralizing, forcing employees to adhere to those common goods in both their work and personal lives. Forcing people to get the vaccine was for the common good. DEI was common good and that in turn led to Trump being elected. The pendulum swings. At least with share holder value, you know where you stand. The common good is a const…

Common good: humans, according to systems theory, have the same needs and there's a finite set. We can map them & then design systems so as to satisfice all of them.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#158

Post by crawfordcomeaux » Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 9:39 PM UTC

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #146

moefh wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an old saying: The purpose of a system is what it does[1]. You can't (well, shouldn't) judge something by its intended purpose if what it ends up doing goes against it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

And businesses as a whole produce positive externalities, as intended, which is why we continue to allow them to exist.

Only when accounting is done without calculating ecological cost, including human quality of life.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#159

Post by carlosjobim » Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 9:40 PM UTC

throwawayoldie wrote: post #33

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, business operators have extremely, extremely broad latitude in how they interpret their fiduciary duty to shareholders. We actually need to combat this notion that somehow exclusive focus on short term returns is somehow legally, morally, or ethically required. It is actually antisocial and obviously destructive.

I have a better idea: let's combat the notion that putting shareholder value ahead of the common good is moral.

Then don't make a company with shares. This is like complaining in a tennis court that it's better to play football. Anybody who makes his business a company with shares will be beholden to shareholders, even if he's the only shareholder. There are plenty of venues for any activity, which isn't structured in this way.

1. Nobody forces you to use a smart phone. 2. Nobody forces you to have social media or use it. 3. Nobody forces you to watch Netflix.

We all choose what we do in life.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#160

Post by smikhanov » Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 9:47 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #155

dimal wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People pay for software all the time. Hell I pay $30/month for a fucking email client (Superhuman). But no one has tried it for a social network. I think the problem is that people think a social network is worthless unless you hit Twitter scale, but perhaps lots of smaller, focused social networks at $2/pop could work. People are now saying that Discord is being enshittified, right on schedule. Maybe there's an oppo…

> People pay for software all the time. Well obviously some people would pay. The hurdle that a company needs to clear is getting enough people to pay to support both an engineering staff and the infrastructure costs. Do the math on how many people are necessary to run a web site with on-call rotation, minimum moderation, and someone to run the business. The number of $2/month subscription required to make that work…

    Do the math on how many people are necessary to run a web site with on-call rotation, minimum moderation, and someone to run the business. The number of $2/month subscription required to make that work is prohbitively high.

Is this really so? Let's try doing the math: you're describing a distributed team of maybe 10 people, likely less. Let's assume you need $600K/year to run this business (is this the right number? not sure, feel free to correct me). At $2/month, that requires 25000 paying users.

Difficult, but not impossible. At $5/month (the $3 difference wouldn't trigger any price sensitivity, talking from real experience) that's 10000 users. If your service actually provides value, you can crank it even higher. Again, difficult, but totally within the realm of possible.

    if the unpaid social network competitors can't get any traction, what makes you think adding a $2/month signup hurdle would improve the situation?

Because the "traction" needed to make free and paid social network work is vastly different. You need insane scale (millions or tens of millions of users) to make free social network viable, hell, my stomach hurts from only thinking about it. A paid social network business, run with certain austerity, can be profitable with one thousand paid users.