461–470 of 1001 posts
But I do wonder if this is just the first step, and like other platforms, ads might slowly spread into more parts of the app over time.
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Criticizing Signal for its crypto payment system is ridiculous. The option is totally optional and completely buried as it is literally the last option when messaging. It’s better to criticize the rule against third-party clients.
You could say the same about Whatsapp's ads though. They are currently in a part of the app that virtually nobody uses. Maybe financial pressure will push Signal to promote its crypto more in future.
Signal is a non-profit. Donate to make sure that they can support themselves.
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I remember when Whatsapp became a paid app, I can’t remember the details as I believe they varied by platform (iOS vs Android) but it was either €0.79 or €0.99, I’m not sure if one off or yearly payment, but it doesn’t matter. I, as the “computer guy”, had friends and family asking how to pirate it. This is coming from SMS costing €0.25 per message (text only!) and also coming from people who would gladly pay €3 for…
> people would never pay for software. I see this and not see this. See this = friend wants to check out app but it costs $1-$3. I'm like, that's less than a coffee or a candy bar that you consume disposably. Why not just try it and if it's sucks throw it away, the same way you might with a new food item? That argument doesn't work on them for some reason. not see = Steam
I still see a lot of people who are afraid of purchasing on the internet and give out their card number. My mother in law ask her daughters to call her a uber when she needs one because she is afraid of installing the app and giving her credit card number[1]. Yet she has all the social medias installed on her smartphone.
[1] The irony is she apparently don't care the her own daughters would have to take that risk for her.
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> people would never pay for software. I see this and not see this. See this = friend wants to check out app but it costs $1-$3. I'm like, that's less than a coffee or a candy bar that you consume disposably. Why not just try it and if it's sucks throw it away, the same way you might with a new food item? That argument doesn't work on them for some reason. not see = Steam
Thanks to Australian customer protection laws, Steam has some of the most lenient refund policies among digital software stores. You can usually get a full refund if your play time is less than a few hours. Plus there are frequent sales. Don’t underestimate the psychological impact of making people feel “I have to buy this now or the deal will be gone.” I genuinely do not know how to get a refund from the google play…
* https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/valve-to-pay-3-million... (not currently loading for me)
* https://archive.is/9mE7i#selection-4964.0-4978.0 (archive of the above)
> The Court held that the terms and conditions in the Steam subscriber agreements, and Steam’s refund policies, included false or misleading representations about consumers’ rights to obtain a refund for games if they were not of acceptable quality.
> In determining the appropriate penalty to impose on Valve, Justice Edelman noted that “even if a very small percentage of Valve’s consumers had read the misrepresentations then this might have involved hundreds, possibly thousands, of consumers being affected”.
> Justice Edelman also took into account “Valve’s culture of compliance [which] was, and is, very poor”. Valve’s evidence was ‘disturbing’ to the Court because Valve ‘formed a view …that it was not subject to Australian law…and with the view that even if advice had been obtained that Valve was required to comply with the Australian law the advice might have been ignored”. He also noted that Valve had ‘contested liability on almost every imaginable point’.
Valve's notice to consumers is archived here, and no longer on their live website: https://web.archive.org/web/20180427063845/https://store.ste...
I can find news articles saying that the court action began in late Aug/early Sep 2014.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/steamowner-v...
Here's an old reddit comment discussing how Valve failed to implement AUD and KRW pricing on schedule, and speculates that at least in Australia's case, it's because of local compliance reasons.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/38dlvd/the_real_reas...
But I can't find anything that definitively ties the rollout of refund policies to an attempt to get the ACCC off their back. The comments on the above reddit post show that GOG and Origin had active refund policies at this time.
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> So, those numbers reflect a capital inflow to the US market rather than (as many people think) absurdly high conversion US users. But the capital inflow is also because there is a lot of consumer spending in the US to convert.
Sort of. It's more because of how ML models work. If you have an audience of 100mn then it's much easier to get enough conversions to optimize the models. It's much harder to do it with an audience of 3mn.
everyone saw this coming the day facebook bought it, but the real issue isn't ads in status . it's that the platform is now locked into meta's attention monetization engine. the founders explicitly said no ads. now not only ads, but paid channels, algorithmic exposure, and user segmentation creeping in. most people won't switch because of network effects, so meta can keep tightening the screws. this isn't about reven…
The frogs have been boiled enough by now gradually and very efficiently. They have been primed well. (In another news Signal still has focus on crytpo. Is this Firefox+Pocket level of stickiness and “we are right!”?).
Firefox bought Pocket. It's not a third party product.
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Both things are worthy of criticism. I'd ideally not use a messaging client that's embroidered in an ecosystem of cryptocurrency scams. Same reason I really don't like Brave even though its cryptocurrency BS is also "optional". It's erosive. But yeah, I might agree that the third party clients thing is a bigger issue. Especially when the official client insists on not officially supporting Linux on ARM64 and not play…
What about https://flathub.org/apps/de.schmidhuberj.Flare ?
Now part of the problem with LibreSignal was the trademark violation of using the name Signal. But Moxie is clearly against any third party using their servers, as we can see in this comment: https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...
IMO that's an unforgivable stance towards third party clients.
I have read (well, skimmed) through their terms of service and haven't seen anything against using their servers from third party software, yet they'll evidently shut down third party software for interacting with their servers. If you're gonna have policies like that, at least outline them in your ToS.
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I used Hangouts including the dogfood versions internally at Google. Problem was it was too complicated because it was designed by Googlers for Googlers. So it supported desktop and mobile, work email and personal email and phone numbers, text and video, and so on. In short, every single complexity conceivable was crammed into the app. Whereas Whatsapp was simple - only phone numbers to sign up, only text and images,…
Thanks for the insider perspective. I used Hangouts for a while and had a bunch of contacts on it when it was Android's default SMS app. Many of them were not particularly technical, including one of my parents whom I don't recall telling to use it. If you were using an Android phone, you were probably already logged in to a Google account. iPhone users had to work a little harder for it (install the app and remember…
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I book with hotels directly almost all the time and never receive marketing spam just regular mail about my upcoming start. Also booking with the hotel lets me select options not available on booking sites like king vs 2 queen bed options, ADA compliant rooms and even floor options. Also if you have AAA or some other memberships, those codes can easily beat discount sites like Booking.com
> I book with hotels directly almost all the time and never receive marketing spam just regular mail about my upcoming start. What's your secret? Even the hotel in privacy-conscious Austria I stayed with once four years ago spams me. > booking with the hotel lets me select options not available on booking sites like king vs 2 queen bed options, ADA compliant rooms and even floor options If their booking system works.…
Very noticeable when using custom domain and emails where I might sign up to the same service several times.