I appreciate the chairman's efforts to build a bipartisan consensus on the settlement. Honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about holding Zuck personally accountable. Of course I think he is and I...
I appreciate the chairman's efforts to build a bipartisan consensus on the settlement. Honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about holding Zuck personally accountable. Of course I think he is and I think he has zero regard for the users, but I also share the concerns raised in the article that it would set a precedent that would move more of these settlements to litigation, and in the end I'm not sure how much better it would be for the consumers. What's the point of knowing true north if you get stuck in a swamp on the way?
This:
But the settlement probably won’t include limits on Facebook’s ability to track users and share data with its partners, mandates that privacy advocates have raised as important for regulation in the United States, and that Facebook has fought. Mr. Simons has argued that the settlement proposal sets a new bar for enforcement of privacy violations and wants to avoid litigation that risks losing that opportunity.
to me is a big take away here. Until there is regulation of what can and cannot be done with user data, and until that legislation is enforced, we are stuck being reactive to breaches of user data instead of proactive. The current economic structure of the net, which provides content and services for 'free' at the expense of selling your data, is not mandated from heaven. That is, things were different once (in the early days of the net without much monetization), and things could be different again. I would be more than happy to pay a small fee for a subscription to a social network if it meant they would take my data seriously. This is part of the reason I am excited about Tildes, and I honestly believe there is something here that can serve as a model for the future of the net. Extreme disregard for user data is not inherent to the once and future net.
you're somewhat unique in that idea, though, which is part of the problem. It seems that people have gotten used to "free" services, they want to have the free lunch and eat it too. Social...
I would be more than happy to pay a small fee for a subscription to a social network if it meant they would take my data seriously.
you're somewhat unique in that idea, though, which is part of the problem. It seems that people have gotten used to "free" services, they want to have the free lunch and eat it too. Social networks would not exist at the scale they are now if you had to pay a fee, and what's more, they're built on the backs of communities which can't afford to do so (children & teens, poor communities & nations).
The best solution will be a middle ground. Facebook deliberately does not offer the option a la youtube red to pay an optional subscription and avoid the problems of data collection and advertisement, and that's what needs to happen - if it's paywalled people will just get around it or stop using it (as we're seeing with news websites).
or, alternatively, they'll spread their money so thin trying to pay for it because everybody tries to adopt it that the whole model just collapses in on itself and cease to be viable completely....
if it's paywalled people will just get around it or stop using it (as we're seeing with news websites).
or, alternatively, they'll spread their money so thin trying to pay for it because everybody tries to adopt it that the whole model just collapses in on itself and cease to be viable completely. that's also been happening with a lot of websites that use a revenue model like that and which also have a lot of competitors, although it might work better with social media, since most people only have one or two main social media websites and social media has several theoretical revenue streams that most websites do not.
Do you have particular sites in mind with this statement? Genuinely curious. In any case, I really believe something about the current monetary model of the Internet has to change. It has up until...
that's also been happening with a lot of websites that use a revenue model like that and which also have a lot of competitors
Do you have particular sites in mind with this statement? Genuinely curious.
In any case, I really believe something about the current monetary model of the Internet has to change. It has up until now been the world's biggest free lunch, and we are just now getting 'food poisoning' in the form of data breaches and hacks. The "free with ads and data collection" model was largely arbitrarily adopted in the early days of the net, and unfortunately set the expectation that web content should be free. It's hard to put that genie back in the bottle, but the state of the internet increasingly makes it seem like something should be done.
a lot of local news outlets and outlets which pivoted to video/digital publishing to try and garner revenue or save money have been getting burned by this model because they're not prestigious or...
Do you have particular sites in mind with this statement? Genuinely curious.
a lot of local news outlets and outlets which pivoted to video/digital publishing to try and garner revenue or save money have been getting burned by this model because they're not prestigious or significant enough and don't have enough coverage for a lot of people to justify subscribing to them (or because of changes in how social media syndicates stuff). it's an ongoing process, and you mostly see it in the large-scale layoffs that have been going on in journalism recently. not many websites have outright folded over it yet, but we're probably approaching a point where places will begin to fold, since there are so many places that have transitioned to a paywall model of some form or another.
That something is micropayments, but we need to figure out how to make that convenient and decentralised in a reasonable and user friendly way. Maybe if banks or big payment processors step in,...
That something is micropayments, but we need to figure out how to make that convenient and decentralised in a reasonable and user friendly way. Maybe if banks or big payment processors step in, who knows.
That something could also be the patreon model, but it needs to happen on a lager scale and people should learn to not think of it as donations, but actual reimbursement of a creative worker (I feel like the former approach is more common, but that is not much more than my gut feeling). The thing I like the most about it is that the payers enable the (at least some of the) resource for non-payers, and thus everybody need not pay for everything.
Subscriptions won't work because one can subscribe only to so many things, whereas you want to use all the resources out there. Paying something up to ¢25 to view a single link is better than a $5 monthly subscription, because then with that $5 I can get to use as many resources as a collection of subscriptions that cost me maybe $100 a month. And who the heck will pay that money to read random news articles? And there will always be a link from sth I am not subscribed to.
It would also be better for publishers because they could charge money easily from everyone on a view basis, whereas with subscriptions you need to convince the user to subscribe, which is not easy, a fact that is obviated by the lengths the websites go to get users to subscribe. Whereas with a nice streamlined micropayments solution with a standard interface you could just show a button with a label "Read the rest for only ¢5!".
Maybe ISPs could sell packages including subscriptions. But another problem would be which subscription. It would lead to more monopoly if they just offered Facebook instead of other alternatives....
Maybe ISPs could sell packages including subscriptions.
But another problem would be which subscription. It would lead to more monopoly if they just offered Facebook instead of other alternatives. Which already happens.
My smartphone's data plan have Whatsapp "for free". If i reach the data limit, internet stops working, except for Whatsapp.
I appreciate the chairman's efforts to build a bipartisan consensus on the settlement. Honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about holding Zuck personally accountable. Of course I think he is and I think he has zero regard for the users, but I also share the concerns raised in the article that it would set a precedent that would move more of these settlements to litigation, and in the end I'm not sure how much better it would be for the consumers. What's the point of knowing true north if you get stuck in a swamp on the way?
This:
to me is a big take away here. Until there is regulation of what can and cannot be done with user data, and until that legislation is enforced, we are stuck being reactive to breaches of user data instead of proactive. The current economic structure of the net, which provides content and services for 'free' at the expense of selling your data, is not mandated from heaven. That is, things were different once (in the early days of the net without much monetization), and things could be different again. I would be more than happy to pay a small fee for a subscription to a social network if it meant they would take my data seriously. This is part of the reason I am excited about Tildes, and I honestly believe there is something here that can serve as a model for the future of the net. Extreme disregard for user data is not inherent to the once and future net.
you're somewhat unique in that idea, though, which is part of the problem. It seems that people have gotten used to "free" services, they want to have the free lunch and eat it too. Social networks would not exist at the scale they are now if you had to pay a fee, and what's more, they're built on the backs of communities which can't afford to do so (children & teens, poor communities & nations).
The best solution will be a middle ground. Facebook deliberately does not offer the option a la youtube red to pay an optional subscription and avoid the problems of data collection and advertisement, and that's what needs to happen - if it's paywalled people will just get around it or stop using it (as we're seeing with news websites).
or, alternatively, they'll spread their money so thin trying to pay for it because everybody tries to adopt it that the whole model just collapses in on itself and cease to be viable completely. that's also been happening with a lot of websites that use a revenue model like that and which also have a lot of competitors, although it might work better with social media, since most people only have one or two main social media websites and social media has several theoretical revenue streams that most websites do not.
Do you have particular sites in mind with this statement? Genuinely curious.
In any case, I really believe something about the current monetary model of the Internet has to change. It has up until now been the world's biggest free lunch, and we are just now getting 'food poisoning' in the form of data breaches and hacks. The "free with ads and data collection" model was largely arbitrarily adopted in the early days of the net, and unfortunately set the expectation that web content should be free. It's hard to put that genie back in the bottle, but the state of the internet increasingly makes it seem like something should be done.
a lot of local news outlets and outlets which pivoted to video/digital publishing to try and garner revenue or save money have been getting burned by this model because they're not prestigious or significant enough and don't have enough coverage for a lot of people to justify subscribing to them (or because of changes in how social media syndicates stuff). it's an ongoing process, and you mostly see it in the large-scale layoffs that have been going on in journalism recently. not many websites have outright folded over it yet, but we're probably approaching a point where places will begin to fold, since there are so many places that have transitioned to a paywall model of some form or another.
That something is micropayments, but we need to figure out how to make that convenient and decentralised in a reasonable and user friendly way. Maybe if banks or big payment processors step in, who knows.
That something could also be the patreon model, but it needs to happen on a lager scale and people should learn to not think of it as donations, but actual reimbursement of a creative worker (I feel like the former approach is more common, but that is not much more than my gut feeling). The thing I like the most about it is that the payers enable the (at least some of the) resource for non-payers, and thus everybody need not pay for everything.
Subscriptions won't work because one can subscribe only to so many things, whereas you want to use all the resources out there. Paying something up to ¢25 to view a single link is better than a $5 monthly subscription, because then with that $5 I can get to use as many resources as a collection of subscriptions that cost me maybe $100 a month. And who the heck will pay that money to read random news articles? And there will always be a link from sth I am not subscribed to.
It would also be better for publishers because they could charge money easily from everyone on a view basis, whereas with subscriptions you need to convince the user to subscribe, which is not easy, a fact that is obviated by the lengths the websites go to get users to subscribe. Whereas with a nice streamlined micropayments solution with a standard interface you could just show a button with a label "Read the rest for only ¢5!".
Maybe ISPs could sell packages including subscriptions.
But another problem would be which subscription. It would lead to more monopoly if they just offered Facebook instead of other alternatives. Which already happens.
My smartphone's data plan have Whatsapp "for free". If i reach the data limit, internet stops working, except for Whatsapp.