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0 pointsxg151mo ago0 comments

Yes, but if we're talking about incentives and "primordial domino tiles" then compensated advertising is what createa the incentives for the whole attention economy and addictive design in the first place.

Feel free to keep doing "pro-bono" advertising, but shareholders definitely wouldn't.

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stingraycharles1mo ago

That’s my thinking. Follow the money, get rid of the source of money, and the whole thing falls down.

Of course that will not happen as there are way too many interests involved.

fauigerzigerk1mo ago

>compensated advertising is what createa the incentives for the whole attention economy

Why would you not want to keep people engaged and even "addicted" in order to keep them as subscribers and make them upgrade to more expensive subscriptions?

ajam15071mo ago

Do you have a specific example of a subscription based platform that is as insidiously addicting as the ad supported ones?

fauigerzigerk1mo ago

- Games.

- Gambling while rarely subscription based is usually paid for directly rather than ad funded.

- Newspaper subscriptions are no less addictive for news junkies than purely ad funded newspapers.

- I watch a lot of Youtube, far more than I used to before I started paying for the subscription.

- Netflix and in the olden days TV.

I'm not entirely sure what "insidiously addictive" actually means. I do sometimes scroll through some TikTok vids. I don't find it particularly addictive compared to, say, Hacker News.

1 more reply

codethief1mo ago

Netflix?

dahart1mo ago

I don’t understand what you mean about shareholders and pro-bono, can you elaborate? Apple advertises Apple products on Apple channels, and Apple’s shareholders love that, and it’s not “pro-bono”.

I don’t think you have the incentives correctly summarized. The incentive of businesses like Google, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram are to make money, and the only way they’ve figured out how to do that at scale is advertising. None of those sites had ads when they started.

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stingraycharles1mo ago

That’s my thinking. Follow the money, get rid of the source of money, and the whole thing falls down.

Of course that will not happen as there are way too many interests involved.

fauigerzigerk1mo ago

>compensated advertising is what createa the incentives for the whole attention economy

Why would you not want to keep people engaged and even "addicted" in order to keep them as subscribers and make them upgrade to more expensive subscriptions?

ajam15071mo ago

Do you have a specific example of a subscription based platform that is as insidiously addicting as the ad supported ones?

fauigerzigerk1mo ago

- Games.

- Gambling while rarely subscription based is usually paid for directly rather than ad funded.

- Newspaper subscriptions are no less addictive for news junkies than purely ad funded newspapers.

- I watch a lot of Youtube, far more than I used to before I started paying for the subscription.

- Netflix and in the olden days TV.

I'm not entirely sure what "insidiously addictive" actually means. I do sometimes scroll through some TikTok vids. I don't find it particularly addictive compared to, say, Hacker News.

1 more reply

codethief1mo ago

Netflix?

dahart1mo ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse