Tracking users is necessary, otherwise we would have to spend way too much on ads. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise my small business can not survive. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise we can not understand who our customers are. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise we can not identify new customers. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise we can not evaluate the effectiveness of our ads.
If your business success relies on tracking everyone all the time, then you have no fucking business and should go out of business.
I love the personal entitlement people have when using free email, free social media, free search engines and everything else to the point they are offended if they try to make ends meet by making profit.
Do you think Y Combinator investments don't use tracking? You would get laughed out of a room if you said you track nothing and have a solid product. A phone call to ask about your product is tracking because it all gets recorded and noted.
This is a little, cart before horse; obviously, nothing is free.
Charge customers. Go ahead. In the first place, Advertisers are the actual customers. Freemium models for retail consumers are a business choice.
People are notoriously bad at processing obscured costs. You see it with things like plastic pollution and waste - that cost is never added to the price of M&M packaging. Tomorrow if it were, people would respond logically and change their buying habits.
To call this entitlement, when its an issue of market structure, is to drive this conversation into identity and morality arguments.
The dominant models in tech are some version of freemium, because “network effects”.
Solve for that either technically or legally and you don’t have to start attributing blame where none exists.
This. If something has commercial value, then put a price on it. We've had currency for thousands of years now. It's a really useful way of signaling value in a commonly understood way. Much more efficient than barter.
Stop asking us to barter away data for services. If the service is truly worth something, then put a clear price on it and show some respect to your customers instead of trying to trick them.
The irony you manufacture doesn't hold. Yes, these products are cheap (currently free) no small part due to the market aberration caused by the tracking and advertising. But it's not certain that they would go away if advertising had to revert to a model less driven by privacy intrusion.
I welcome the day such intrusions are rendered illegal or impractical, so that the market can price these offerings appropriately. Until then, why not use what exists?
> such intrusions are rendered illegal or impractical
The GDPR was an attempt. Guess what happened? Everyone implemented it in such a way as to appear compliant but not necessarily be compliant, and to cause maximum annoyance to the user.
What the solution is here is to have an educated population and powerful privacy tools, like uBlock Origin. [1]
But of course, the surveillance oligopoly is developing its own browser [2], specifically to maintain control and make it hard to implement such tools [3].
Quality for consumers has only ever been truly won by regulation - all major economies heavily regulate all industries. The market didn't make food safe, regulation was needed (see history e.g. https://www.hygienie.org/a-brief-history-of-uk-food-safety-l...).
I love the personal entitlement people have when using free email, free social media, free search engines and everything else to the point they are offended if they try to make ends meet by making profit.
Those are not free, the users are paying for them with their share of the ad budget in the price of all the products they buy. And I am not complaining about ads per se - even though I would personally prefer if they disappeared and I could directly pay for the services I use - but about the tracking behind them.
But 1000 HN readers paying $X per month for a web browsing service is not going to pay for the R&D needed to overcome Google's amazing ability to search the web.
ex. $5 per month from 1000 HN readers is only $5000. This is petty money if you want and all swinging, all dancing product, profit and work/life balance.
You should check out Indie Hackers which is essentially a graveyard of products, ideas and people asking why their $3 per month product is not being purchased or used.
You using software for free and in return providing some data in return is the old barter system. Which many people would love to go back to...
Sure, if you are not paying for a service you are the product. I get that. You get that. We can make informed decisions about balancing cost/privacy. But the same cannot really be said for the average consumer. This is not because the average consumer is too stupid to understand, but more so because the services themselves deliberately obfuscate their data collection and its consequences forcing users to do their own research to try and understand what is happening.
Honestly what would be really interesting to me would be to give users a clear-cut choice between tracking vs paying. E.g. replace the dialog in the article with a choice between allowing Facebook to track your activity across other companies' apps and websites or paying a $2/mo subscription fee. I am not so delusional as to think that 75% of people will opt for the subscription, but it would be really interesting to see how many actually would!
[...] paying a $2/mo subscription fee. I am not so delusional as to think that 75% of people will opt for the subscription [...]
Which is weird in itself, not exactly sure how we ended up in this spot. People in a restaurant or a bar are never thinking whether they should order another drink that will be gone in a couple of minutes based on the costs but they refuse to spend one dollar on buying a mobile game that they play for hours and hours and that forces them to watch an ad every minute.
Because people like products and tangible things. Look at the Apple accessories - overpriced, overengineered yet people will happily overpay, lose it and then pay for it again.
Ask someone for £3 for a full vehicle check to know if it's been stolen, crashed, written off, still on finance (basically major headaches) is way too much of an ask.
An example that I have is my project that does the above. 300 free checks and 5 premium checks 6 months later, I still scratch my head at how people are scared of buying 2nd hand cars but literally do nothing to protect themselves.
There is a huge difference between the tracking Facebook does and "a phone call yo ask about your product". Having no tracking at all forced onto you might be the idealistic end goal for users, but it sure is unrealistic. Of course that doesn't prevent you from criticizing the intrusive, overboarding tracking of some social networks or advertisers.
You're identifying the wrong problem. Users aren't upset because they can't use social media for free while not being tracked, they're upset because they can't use social media without being tracked period.
You have it entirely backwards. The advertisers on things like facebook should be paying the users for using the site and getting their ads in front of them. facebook is not even worth $1 a month to most people, that's why the won't charge for it, and shows it's actual value to the end user. The real benefit of facebook is to the companies trying to shill their wares on facebook.
While I dont mind some tracking and telemetry, platforms have abused that trust and track everything they can now. I'm all for going scorched earth policy.
Similar to how if an app sends just one spam notification, it's an uninstall and a 2 star rating.
> platforms have abused that trust and track everything they can now
The frog boiling that got me to block tracking and advertising in every way available to me was the era of the advertising hyperlink (late 2000s). An article would have what looked like hyperlinks to other stories or sources but were really just links to ads for products that matched that keyword.
If your cursor even hinted at hovering over them they would generate a popup with some obnoxious ad with a "close button" so small it was virtually impossible to click it without going to the advertiser site. Such sites would almost invariably spit out pop-unders, resize browser windows, and try to install browser toolbars.
When that style of ad got popular I started blocking domains in my hosts file and using GreaseMonkey scripts to block ads. I haven't stopped in the decade and a half since then. I don't oppose advertising nor do I necessarily oppose tracking since at the very least I can't hide from a server's access logs. I do oppose the absolute bottom feeding of AdTech companies.
There's an argument to be made that "tracking" has had less real world harm to humanity than the push to get rid of it. Real harm will come to people/business through loss of income due to the clamp down on tracking. Not to mention that ads are the foundation of all the content we get for "free" that we've come to rely on.
What is worse though is I have bought many products from non-targeted ads because I didn't even know I wanted the item until I randomly ran into.
I loved my grandmother but targeted ads always remind me of the junk my grandma would get me for Christmas. She knew enough to be in the ball park but because she was in the ball park my taste is more picky and ultimately I never liked almost anything she got me.
I would personally not agree to tracking, but who should be and shouldn't be in business based on tracking is not for you (or me, or anyone) to decide. If there are people who are fine with tracking in exchange for services, then they should be able to make that exchange.
> but who should be and shouldn't be in business based on tracking is not for you (or me, or anyone) to decide
I generally agree with the poster. A majority of "modern" companies that pop up have one of two strategies nowadays:
1. No sustainable business model, nothing to sell to users. Grow as fast as possible, get bought by one of the established megacorps.
2. The product is kind of there, but it is only an excuse to grab as much data as possible. Again nothing to sell to actual users.
The ad business has kind of become a market that trades among themselves, they don't sell anything but the promise for others to sell more, except now companies that mainly sell ads also buy advertisements for their business.
It's become a huge house of cards and you really have to wonder what the reason for their existence is.
Thinking purely as a customer the fact that I have just no way to just give a company my money and in turn they'll just leave me alone with all of their useless and hostile bull** is hugely frustrating and I think they deserve to go out of business if they truly have no other way to keep the shop running.
No, I do not want this single strawberry for free just for you to break into my house and photocopy as many documents as you can (and leak them to the public a few months later because you don't care a single bit about keeping your data secure)...
i agree, nicely put. just a small addendum to your two points: having very little product for users to sell only works if the product is free-as-in-beer for them - and the way to get there is to sell data about users to paying customers. these are fundamentals of engagement economy: get users kind of addicted to something which has barely any value and they wouldn't pay for it if they had to and sell everything they tell about themselves in the process of using it to people willing to buy the data. due to network effects user data value grows super-linearly, so you can perceive your own data as 'worthless', but it becomes worth much more once you get data about others.
In principle I agree. On the other hand, are people agreeing to be tracked really aware of what they agree to and what the value of the resulting information is? Would they still agree if they knew? And this of course also requires that my choice is actually honored and I currently have very little trust in this respect, after all we already had Do Not Track and nobody cared.
This is the kind of false choice that simply can't be allowed; similar to selling oneself into slavery or selling one's organs are not considered valid transactions. If it is allowed, the market will converge on it. Without a price and disincentive to implementing pervasive surveillance, it will be guaranteed to happen.
> If there are people who are fine with tracking in exchange for services, then they should be able to make that exchange.
Informed consent is almost always lacking. 99.999% of people party to it do not understand this bargain. Do you fully understand it or just "in principle" - which is fine until the rubber hits the road.
"All you have to agree to is being warm, sensitive and caring to our clients." Fine. Prostitution should be legal and absolutely nobody should be subject to it on that basis of understanding what they're signing up for.
Properly informed consent is always crucial to this argument that people are fine with it. The dishonesty, bait and switch, ongoing secretiveness of it should not be necessary and would not happen if it were informed consent. But that consumer fraud being perpretrated 100% built google and facebook. There is not now nor has there ever been consent. Morever when consent is completely withdrawn - you delete your account - they keep a shadow account. To HELL with them and those who pretend all this is honest and above board because it just isn't.
This is fine, and I know some people who are aware and are happy with the ads they recieve.
I do personaly have a problem with not being given the choice, also it should be an opt-in option. Privacy shouldn't be compromised and then restored after the data is already gone.
No. It is in fact your sense of entitlement that makes us sick.
Update: ok, after checking danbruc's comment history, they probably weren't arguing for tracking, and the second paragraph should be read in third person... I'll take my downvotes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I prefer privacy too. But there is something entitled about wanting to interact with a company but keep the details of that interaction secret from that same company.
That sense of entitlement that you can get stuff for free without having to pay for it in some way. You use facebook for free, it seems to provide you some value, why do you think you are entitled to get this for free?
I am not getting it for free, I am already paying for it with my share of the ad budget included in all the products I buy. And I am not asking for anything to be for free, just allow me to pay for it.
This is such convoluted reasoning and you keep mentioning it. For example I could say: "I don't want to pay the road toll, I pay for it with the gas tax I pay" or "I don't want to pay for Disneyland, I pay for it with all the things I buy inside". Technically Disney could make entrance free and charge ridiculous rates for everything inside but I'm certain that makes theme parks significantly less viable as a business - maybe even straight up unprofitable.
What is convoluted about that? I buy a product, some fraction of the profit goes into the marketing budget, some fraction of the marketing budget goes to Facebook. How am I not paying for using Facebook? Where does their revenue come from if not from me?
Take my Disney example. All what you said applies to that example too. Where does their revenue come if not from you? They could make entrance free and make money on what you buy inside. In fact, you can go further with this. You should not pay for any government services other than taxes. Where does the government revenue come if not from you? Why should they charge for things like drivers license renewals. Everything should be free and come from your taxes...
What's convoluted about your argument is you are asking the service provider to change their business model by pointing our somewhere along the chain they are making money from you so they should be happy. Changing business models might also mean completely changing the way they provide the service. The whole service might have evolved differently if this model was enforced from the beginning rather than suddenly springing it on them now and then saying "make money in a way that's more convenient for me, I don't like how you make money now".
Their business model, leaving aside the ethics/merits, is pretty simple. They offer targeted users on a platter to advertisers. It's easy to package up and sell. Suddenly that's being taken away. Of course they will kick and scream because they've depended on this predictable money making model. Saying "I buy things so you make money" doesn't even make sense. They become no different to a billboard provider.
I don't get your Disneyland example. I replied to comments saying users are getting to use Facebook for free but that is not true, they are paying indirectly via ads. Did anyone claim that you get Disneyland for free? No, you pay for it. Some part with the ticket price, some part when you pay food and drinks, some part with merchandise, some part maybe later when you watch your next Disney movie as the whole thing is to some extend a gigantic ad.
And it matters how you divide it up. You could have a high ticket price and give away all the food for free but that big upfront payment would probably be off-putting for many even if they end up not paying more. For people who only want to ride some roller-coaster and not eat and drink your offering is now not attractive. Other people would exploit your offering, eating only the most expensive stuff in huge quantities.
You could also do it the other way around, have no tickets and pay for everything individually. This will change the entire experience and you have the added complexity of processing payments in many more locations. And all this also applies to you tax example, some services are only used by some part of the population, the other part might be unhappy to also pay for it. If you do not have a driving license, why should you pay for driving license renewals? On the opposite end of the spectrum you might have healthcare where you want to spread the risk across everyone and not only have those pay that actually need it. Its all mostly a matter of trade-offs and incentives how you structure it.
To make the analogy more fitting, imagine Disneyland not charging you for tickets. But they put up cameras and track you all day long, record what you eat, with whom you visit the park, what merchandise you buy, and measure some chemical indicators when you use their toilettes. And then they sell this information to other companies to pay for your visit to Disneyland.
> And it matters how you divide it up. You could have a high ticket price and give away all the food for free but that big upfront payment would probably be off-putting for many even if they end up not paying more. For people who only want to ride some roller-coaster and not eat and drink your offering is now not attractive. Other people would exploit your offering, eating only the most expensive stuff in huge quantities.
Bingo! This is exactly my point! To go off what you said, if Disneyland operated like how you described (selling your data for income), the park would be completely different. They would be optimized to collect that data because the whole park was built on the premise that everything is free and we are going to siphon as much from you in the form of data. Every ride in the park will be built to gather that data. However since Disneyland is not that, they haven't optimized for data collection. It's built on making you happy by the time you leave, not making you spend as much time as possible in the park. You seem to want to walk into a Disneyland that's optimized for data collection and be like "Wow you guys are collecting too much data! You guys anyway make money from me buying stuff! Just stop collecting my data! I pay for all I use indirectly though the stuff I buy!" <--- That's convoluted and unfair. Your sudden awakening for privacy concerns doesn't suddenly replace all the lost income that they have depended on and everyone has willingly given for so long. You can't just wave a magic wand on such a fundamental business model change and expect it to be fixed after your sudden change of mind. It's incredibly naïve to thing you can change business models like that. Companies live and die on their business models.
Again looping back to the things you mentioned about two Disneylands - they are completely different. It was you who changed in between. Suddenly you feel that they are not entitled to your data. But you've been giving them your data for years, and got them hooked on it. And now suddenly you are disgusted. Nothing wrong with changing or wanting different things but you feeling disgusted suddenly says a lot more about you than them.
Personally I think its a necessary change but I would have liked to seen it implemented in a more regulatory level but over a longer period of time so everyone has time to change. Apple is acting in an extremely predatory manner. They are forcibly lowering the quality of their competitor's ad network quickly so suddenly their ad network becomes a lot more viable. I wouldn't be surprised to see a big jump in the ad network spend over the next few years. They're doing all this under the guise of protecting the user but it's obviously bullshit. This is very clear with their vehement opposition of right to repair. They don't care about the consumers. They want to keep growing and they will keep doing so by whatever means necessary (under the guise of protecting consumers) to achieve this goal.
Isn't that up to facebook to determine how they want you to pay for their services? Just like it's up to disney, apple, microsoft, tesla to determine what their pricing model is. And it's up to you if you can live with this pricing model, and if you don't, don't use the product or service.
We pay for internet access. When I first used the web in 1993, the internet fee was covered by the tuition I paid, as only universities, government and a relatively small number of corporations were connected. Later, ISPs were formed and we began paying for home access. The "entitlement" we pay for, IMO, is access to a network free from surveillance and advertising, or at least one where we can navigate around that. The 1993 web was full of free content. Few web users paid for anything. (As remains true today.) The beauty of the web is that anyone can set up a website. However no one is entitled to traffic. There used to be this idea of "netiquette". I think it is fair to say that these enormous websites like Facebook with massive traffic are playing by their own rules. They do come across as having a sense of entitlement. It is not their network. It is our network. Most if not all of the "content" they use to draw the traffic they get is user-generated. You pay your fee and you are entitled to access the network but (arguably) that does not include conducting mass surveillance and sustaining a massive advertising campaign that targets people personally.
Tha value of Facebook is in its users, not the people who write the website's PHP and run the servers. It is commonly agreed that writing a Facebook clone is not a difficult task. That value is the users. There is a reason Facebook will never charge a usage fee to anyone.
How much of that money for internet access goes to facebook? How are they supposed to develop and maintain their website from zero money they get from you paying for internet access? How are you going to put all your content online if they don't invest in developing and maintaining their services?
"How much of that money for internet access goes to facebook?"
Zero, hopefully. I am not much of a Facebook user.
"How are they going to maintain their website from zero money they get from you paying for internet access?"
That's not my concern. They ran the website without ads for years. They later received millions in investment. There is no such thing as infinite growth. The multi-billion-page website with content of pages uploaded by users for free and moderation performed by low-paid workers in other countries idea is an experiment that might be a failure. Time will tell. But as I said, I am not a user, so it is not my concern.
"How are you going to put all your content online..."
I am not going to do that. Not really my thing. I prefer to submit my public thoughts and ideas to HN. If I want to communicate and share stuff with family, friends and colleagues I do not think using a page on someone else's website is a great solution. Peer-to-peer makes more sense.1 The fees I pay for internet access cover that cost.
Tracking users is necessary, otherwise we would have to spend way too much on ads. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise my small business can not survive. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise we can not understand who our customers are. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise we can not identify new customers. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise we can not evaluate the effectiveness of our ads.
If your business success relies on tracking everyone all the time, then you have no fucking business and should go out of business.