Subscription Hell • Hacker News Board

Re: Subscription Hell

#401

Post by Aramgutang » Mon, May 07, 2018, 1:57 AM UTC

lucb1e wrote: post #347

smaddock wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're describing sounds similar to Basic Attention Token [1] which is used by Brave browser [2]. [1] https://basicattentiontoken.org/ [2] https://brave.com/

If the intro video is to be believed, that seems like a terrible idea in so many ways. The video explains it like "you view ads, your browser privately tracks whether you watched them, and awards the website and the user with BATs". So while we now have middlemen in the form of ad networks, with BATs we have an additional one to convert that currency into your local currency. Additionally, the ad network will have to…

Right now, earning BAT by watching ads is not yet implemented. After you use up the free 10 BAT you get on first install, you have to buy more to keep paying the sites you visit (this is reasonably frictionless at the moment, and is likely to get more so). I assume there aren't many people right now that buy BAT to send into the Brave wallet (though I do, and know of others that do), but it's still early days.

The part of their proposal I would suggest fixating on is the fact that if you make deposits into your Brave wallet, you get to block ads (right now, ads are blocked regardless), and publishers will be able to turn off their anti-ad-blocking measures if they see you're using Brave, since you'll be providing them with revenue. The hope is that in the future, paywall sites like WSJ may allow you to bypass their paywall if they can verify that you're using Brave.

There is a lot of uncertainty right now about how the whole ad system will work, because the team is focusing on making the browser robust enough so it can compete with FF and Chrome. But in the meantime, they're also getting useful information about what real users and publishers are actually keen on.

I suspect that the more obvious flaws, like the ones you pointed out, will be accounted for once the system is fleshed out. They have not shied away from moving away from their original proposal to more practical approaches.

Regarding the earned BAT by watching ads, I believe that it cannot actually be withdrawn, only used to pay publishers, but again, things may change. And I agree that the blockchain may superflous here, but using it has allowed them to get the funding to get things off the ground and attract users, which counts as a valid use in my book.

Re: Subscription Hell

#402

Post by gesman » Mon, May 07, 2018, 1:58 AM UTC

But it's a free market. If you think price is too expensive for offering - you don't pay. Vote with your wallet.

Many subscription-based products or services are working non stop to update their product or service. Whether it's to generate and curate content or update/fix/improve software.

Not like it's a totally new, shocking concept.

Re: Subscription Hell

#403

Post by daveguy » Mon, May 07, 2018, 2:02 AM UTC

rolleiflex wrote: post #291

lultimouomo wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the negligible amount of money that matters. The trick is that at the end of your yearly subscription you have already upgraded to a newer version, so falling back to the perpetual license means downgrading, which is both often a practical problem and (perhaps most importantly) something that I think many have an emotional aversion to. I'm pretty sure that if the fallback license was to the most recent versi…

That makes sense, thanks. In the end, though, when I discovered this was how it worked at the end of my PyCharm subscription, it left me quite a bitter taste in my mouth, and I just stopped purchasing any JetBrains products. These kind of details are akin to trying to trick people via putting stuff into EULAs nobody reads, and for me at least, it gives the distinct feeling that they're trying very hard to screw me ov…

Would it have been better if you "purchase the current version and get temporary upgrades for a year for free." Essentially the same thing, but up front and not implying that you get more than you do.

Re: Subscription Hell

#404

Post by scarface74 » Mon, May 07, 2018, 2:18 AM UTC

lajhsdfkl wrote: post #218

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I don't think it would be a great loss to forgo most of the advertising funded content.

>Honestly, I don't think it would be a great loss to forgo most of the advertising funded content. Since you clearly haven't put much thought into this comment let's just start listing things that are funded by ads - News - content creators on youtube - music - twitch - search - blogs - websites with tutorials - a thousand different things which I have missed and then facebook, snapchat, instagram, and twitter which…

For tutorials, I pay $30 a month for a PluralSight subscription, $12-$20 for the occasional Udemy video and watch vendor supplied tutorials from Amazon and Microsoft.

I hate ads for video content. I pay for Netflix and ad free Hulu. I use Plex for ad free content from CBS and the CW via by subscribing to the channels. It’s more ad blocking then piracy. Plex scrapes the content from the networks’ website real time and transcodes it and streams it.

I pay for Apple Music and before that iTunes.

I would pay for a high quality news source, I use to pay for WSJ.

Re: Subscription Hell

#405

Post by dvcrn » Mon, May 07, 2018, 2:39 AM UTC

The subscription craze for utility apps as mentioned in the post is especially frustrating. I'm not talking about apps that need to maintain a infrastructure, but just normal apps that really should not be subscription based.

I get it, monthly subscription is a constant flow of money which makes things more predictable (and more profitable), but these things add up for the user.

Here are some apps on my phone that changed to a subscription model

- Timepage: Really nice calendar from Moleskine

- Day One: A journaling app

- Ulysses: Mentioned in the article

- Spendee: Budgeting app

Some other subscription apps:

- Moleskine actions: A todo list from Moleskine

- Carrot weather: Really cool weather app that already costs a steep $5 (for a weather app), but still has a in-app subscription for extra stuff (arguably not needed but still)

- CamScanner: Usable on free tier, but watermarks scanned PDFs. Why does this need a monthly subscription? Bought ScanBot for $5 instead.

- Bear: Note taking app

There is absolutely no reason why a calendar or a journaling app should have a monthly subscription.

I am glad that I went in early on apps like Day One and Timepage and got a lifetime subscription out of it, but if it wasn't for this, these apps would have been off my phone already.

It's odd that I am starting to get happy when a new major version of an app (like OmniFocus) gets announced and it's just a one time price instead of a subscription.

Re: Subscription Hell

#406

Post by noobiemcfoob » Mon, May 07, 2018, 2:40 AM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #359

gnicholas wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, not so much what consumers want as what succeeds on social media.

If people don't want it, why does it succeed on social media, or anywhere at all?

Because we count success as someone clicked on the article at all as opposed to how they used it. People talk about the studies and A/B testing done to support the claims of rich media being all the rage, but how easy would it be for any of these studies to miss the forest for a tree?

Re: Subscription Hell

#407

Post by pvg » Mon, May 07, 2018, 3:14 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #240

techsupporter wrote: post #33

At the time of this writing, all of the comments here are focused on content, but I want to touch on the author's bit about software: > It’s not just Bloomberg and media — it’s software too. I used to write everything in Ulysses, a syncing Markdown editor for OS X and iOS. I paid $70 to buy the apps, but then the company switched to a $40 a year annual subscription, and as the dozens of angry reviews and comments ill…

A model I really like is the one IntelliJ uses. They encourage you to buy a subscription. But when you buy a year at once, you get a "perpetual fallback license" such that you can always keep using the version that is current when you buy: https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What... That means I always will have access to my projects and to the level of functionality I start with. But I keep getti…

It feels pointlessly complicated to me, the IDE version of picodollars. Their pricing is already a great value and I'd happily pay them a premium not to ever have to look at another weird 'perpetual fallback' Gantt chart.

Re: Subscription Hell

#408

Post by notSupplied » Mon, May 07, 2018, 3:18 AM UTC

mehrdadn wrote: post #393

thechao wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the sublime folk offered a “bug fix only” monthly subscription, I’d buy that. My grandfather went through a half day’s paycheck of tooling a month on his own dime. I figure bug fixes are the software equivalent of sharpening chisels, buying new bits, surfacing a mill, etc.

> If the sublime folk offered a “bug fix only” monthly subscription, I’d buy that. My grandfather went through a half day’s paycheck of tooling a month on his own dime. I figure bug fixes are the software equivalent of sharpening chisels, buying new bits, surfacing a mill, etc. Except bits don't rot?

New OS versions (especially from Apple) regularly create new bugs or completely break compatibility with old software. The cost of upkeep is not entirely predictable and easy to "price-in" to the upfront cost.

Re: Subscription Hell

#409

Post by notSupplied » Mon, May 07, 2018, 3:20 AM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #217

beberlei wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, that is economics 101. consumers price goods by value, not by costs. if your costs are higher than consumers are willing to pay, then you will at some point go bankrupt.

> consumers price goods by value, not by costs But the point is he's a consumer and he isn't pricing by value - he's pricing by costs.

"consumers price goods by value, not by costs"

That is in itself a great argument for the subscription model. Consumes receive value from continued use over time, so why not fit revenue to the same shape?

Re: Subscription Hell

#410

Post by saratogacx » Mon, May 07, 2018, 3:27 AM UTC

lajhsdfkl wrote: post #285

ozim wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How showing ads is against GDPR? You still can show ads, you just need consent for tracking users. If they are going out of business because of GDPR they were not just showing ads.

There are no ads without tracking.

Ads existed before tracking. DDG uses ads based on the page content, not what is known about the user. This is actually how ads were before everyone went tracking-happy.

It is a model I prefer simply because it is more inline with the content I'm viewing. I'm more willing to let those ads get whitelisted because they're more likely to be related to the content I'm looking at and less about "what do we think saratogacx really wants today based on all of the data across the web."