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CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

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Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

#201

Post by Etheryte »

Incipient wrote: post #163
mqus wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author builds a ticket system and says it's not trivially solveable. What's your trivial solution then?

Names on tickets, and an in-application/website transfer+fee process that stops people putting on a mark up. Revert to the current anonymous ticket process for any lower popularity event for simplicity if required.

Many small venues do this where I'm from and it works like a charm. Even just name on ticket without any further transfer option works well. Not sure if you're going? Don't buy a ticket, more tickets for people who are going for sure.

Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

#202

Post by HenryBemis »

> In 2014, Google presented the one-click CAPTCHA and later, with reCAPTCHA v3, the “invisible CAPTCHA”. Similar services are offered by other companies like Cloudflare, Akamai, and others. They rely on analyzing everything they know about you and feeding it into a large machine-learning model to compare you with behavior...

> This requires the creation of extensive centralized profiles about the people visiting your site.

Very nice wording to avoid/workaround GDPR/EDPS attention. So, they compare "me" to a "behaviour". Notice the words.. not "my behaviour" to "ProfileType_004 behaviour". Because that would be "profiling" and GDPR don't like profiling! So..

On the second quote, again, they compare something vague to "centralized profiles" (what I wrote as "ProfileType_004" above (or whatever they are called in each vendor). Again, the ether is compared/matched to a profile, so.. they profile us :)

ufff...

Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

#203

Post by immibis »

stavros wrote: post #134
kassner wrote: post #119

I can’t claim I’m the first one to think about this, but every time Ticketmaster shows up on HN I keep coming back to this idea: Sell the tickets with regressive price based on time. Sales starts say 2 months before event, initial price is truly exorbitant, say one million dollars. Price decreases linearly down to zero (or true cost price). At any point, people can see current price and the seats left. Now every pote…

The scalper problem is a mispricing problem: Scalpers are just arbitrageurs because ticket prices are artificially very low. If you want to fix that, you need to ask yourself "why are ticket prices artificially very low?" first. The answer probably isn't "artists/venues like leaving money on the table".

It's only mispricing if you take market dynamics, and making the most money possible, as paramount. If your goal is to actually bring fans to your show, you might want a different system.

One music festival issues ID-linked tickets using a lottery 8 months in advance. If only the richest people attended, it would actually destroy the festival. And no, they can't hold it more than once each year so that prices drop.

Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

#204

Post by immibis »

jmalicki wrote: post #124
kassner wrote: post #119

I can’t claim I’m the first one to think about this, but every time Ticketmaster shows up on HN I keep coming back to this idea: Sell the tickets with regressive price based on time. Sales starts say 2 months before event, initial price is truly exorbitant, say one million dollars. Price decreases linearly down to zero (or true cost price). At any point, people can see current price and the seats left. Now every pote…

This is a similar idea to a second price auction, but in reverse. Everyone puts in their maximum price they're willing to pay, and the lowest price that fills the seats is what people pay. The advantage to this model is that there is no financial risk to overpaying. Of course with an open bid continuous auction there are problems with bid shading (manipulating the auction by posting prices mostly meant to influence o…

People don't know the maximum price they're willing to pay. There's actually a probability distribution, not a hard cutoff, and certainly not one known in advance. The higher the price is, the less likely I am to buy it. Auctions work for two classses of people: spherical humans in a vacuum, and economists.

Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

#205

Post by immibis »

Spivak wrote: post #68
hackingonempty wrote: post #25

The reality now is the ticket sellers and bands are the main scalpers and everyone else are now secondary scalpers. Now that tickets are all electronic and the ticket sellers operate secondary markets there is no "face value" anymore and pricing is dynamic. Not all tickets are released at once and many are offered at "platinum" prices at first. All through the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's and 00's concert tickets were arou…

Concert tickets are still that low, you just can't go to stadium shows for supermassive artists at that price. A saturday night at a popular EDM venue with a 2k capacity headlining an artist with ~500k monthly listeners on Spotify will run you about $25 for the floor or $50 for VIP. A "sticky floor" bar venue ticket with a capacity of maybe 300 for an alt-z band with somewhere in the realm of 250k-3M monthly listener…

I don't think that when people say "a concert" they mean something that happens every Friday and Saturday night. I think it means a unique event.

Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

#207

Post by robalni »

I feel like the only protection against AI in general, not just for tickets, is trust. If I trust you, you can do whatever you want as long as I trust you. If I don't trust you, you can do whatever you want; I will just block or ignore everything you do.

It's when we try to interact with random people that we get problems. Doing that will become less and less possible the more AI grows. We will have a future where trust is very important.

Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

#208

Post by mathgeek »

kbenson wrote: post #184
theamk wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's obviously preferable to get paid for the entire tour on the day it's announced it's only obvious to "private equity" type people. There is energy in the concerts - and a lot of people go to live shows for that. Otherwise, one would listen to the recording / watch music videos instead - it is cheaper and the seats are nicer too. If the seats are half-empty, or only full of people who are ready to pay exorbitant…

>> it's obviously preferable to get paid for the entire tour on the day it's announced > it's only obvious to "private equity" type people. No, it's obvious. Anyone that has to choose between getting $100 right now or $100 trickled in over months would opt for it right now for many reasons (inflation, the ability it invest it, the ability to use if it needed for unexpected situation, etc). Wanting events to be popula…

> No, it's obvious. Anyone that has to choose between getting $100 right now or $100 trickled in over months would opt for it right now...

As usual, there are real life edge cases where folks don’t choose just on what makes the most sense financially. Many teachers work less than 52 weeks a year but choose to have their pay distributed over 52 weeks.

Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

#209

Post by dcow »

kbenson wrote: post #184
theamk wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's obviously preferable to get paid for the entire tour on the day it's announced it's only obvious to "private equity" type people. There is energy in the concerts - and a lot of people go to live shows for that. Otherwise, one would listen to the recording / watch music videos instead - it is cheaper and the seats are nicer too. If the seats are half-empty, or only full of people who are ready to pay exorbitant…

>> it's obviously preferable to get paid for the entire tour on the day it's announced > it's only obvious to "private equity" type people. No, it's obvious. Anyone that has to choose between getting $100 right now or $100 trickled in over months would opt for it right now for many reasons (inflation, the ability it invest it, the ability to use if it needed for unexpected situation, etc). Wanting events to be popula…

If it’s a normal function then we sure go through a whole lot of effort to make sure a human and not a python script is buying tickets. If it’s normal, why doesn't the industry embrace it wholesale?

Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

#210

Post by dbspin »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #153
stavros wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scalper problem is a mispricing problem: Scalpers are just arbitrageurs because ticket prices are artificially very low. If you want to fix that, you need to ask yourself "why are ticket prices artificially very low?" first. The answer probably isn't "artists/venues like leaving money on the table".

I think a significant portion is that artists like leaving money on the table. being perceived as greedy can cause reputational harm significantly greater than the increased ticket revenues that the market will bear.

It's hilarious to read this discussion on HN, because the mentalities of artists and corporate business folks are so different. Artists aren't making a rational decision to reduce reputational damage by keeping ticket prices low. They're employing empathy to imagine themselves in the position of their audience - as music fans themselves first and foremost.

Why do people create at all? It's certainly not the most effective route to maximum income. It's a form of connection. Performing is sharing the joy of music and creativity with a group of people who've formed a connection to you through your art.

Now while the industry certainly selects for people who do not think this way (i.e.: performers rather than artists), despite itself it's full of artists whose values are not aligned with whatever kind of homo econominicus maximal self interest, war of all against all that pervades here.

Source - I'm not a musician, but I am a writer and I've directed music videos for numerous artists over the years. The idea that they're all motivated by the same mechanics as faceless entities like ticket master is silly.

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