Good to note that this isn’t even hypothetical, it literally happened with cable. First it was ad-funded, then you paid to get rid of ads, then you paid exorbitant prices to get fed ads, and the final evolution was being required to pay $100+ for bundles including channels you’d never use to get at the one you would. It’s already happening to streaming services too, which have started to bundle.
I don’t think the arguments made by you and OP are mutually exclusive. Facebook is a rotten company and we shouldn’t even be using their website, let alone paying them for the privilege. But Websites aren’t free to operate, Ads are toxic, and we shouldn’t let Ads be the method by which Websites pay their costs.
If OP weren’t posting their argument in a thread about Facebook, but Lemmy instead for example, I think your read might be different. Their last sentence, to me, indicates that they agree with you.
To be clear: When I say “This is good”, I don’t mean that this makes Facebook a good service. You’re 100% right about Facebook’s trajectory here.
My hope lies in improving consumer expectations, and tech entrepreneurs’ estimation of those expectations. For about 20 years, there’s been a universal assumption that users will never pay for a website, ever. They’ll pay with their privacy and attention all day long, but their wallet? Not gonna happen.
If this proves that there are users who will pay with their wallet instead of their soul, then it paves a way for people who are interested in making ethical services – people who may have been discouraged in the past because they were told that the only way to keep the lights on was to round up their users and feed them to a hungry pack of advertisers.
I made space for us both to be right here, cuz you pointed out a way for my original comment to be misinterpreted and I agreed with your thoughts on that misinterpretation.
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Good to note that this isn’t even hypothetical, it literally happened with cable. First it was ad-funded, then you paid to get rid of ads, then you paid exorbitant prices to get fed ads, and the final evolution was being required to pay $100+ for bundles including channels you’d never use to get at the one you would. It’s already happening to streaming services too, which have started to bundle.
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I don’t think the arguments made by you and OP are mutually exclusive. Facebook is a rotten company and we shouldn’t even be using their website, let alone paying them for the privilege. But Websites aren’t free to operate, Ads are toxic, and we shouldn’t let Ads be the method by which Websites pay their costs.
If OP weren’t posting their argument in a thread about Facebook, but Lemmy instead for example, I think your read might be different. Their last sentence, to me, indicates that they agree with you.
deleted by creator
To be clear: When I say “This is good”, I don’t mean that this makes Facebook a good service. You’re 100% right about Facebook’s trajectory here.
My hope lies in improving consumer expectations, and tech entrepreneurs’ estimation of those expectations. For about 20 years, there’s been a universal assumption that users will never pay for a website, ever. They’ll pay with their privacy and attention all day long, but their wallet? Not gonna happen.
If this proves that there are users who will pay with their wallet instead of their soul, then it paves a way for people who are interested in making ethical services – people who may have been discouraged in the past because they were told that the only way to keep the lights on was to round up their users and feed them to a hungry pack of advertisers.
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Look.
I made space for us both to be right here, cuz you pointed out a way for my original comment to be misinterpreted and I agreed with your thoughts on that misinterpretation.
But you clearly just want to fight now.