
Death by a thousand likes: Facebook and Twitter are killing the open web - snake117
http://qz.com/545048/death-by-a-thousand-likes-how-facebook-and-twitter-are-killing-the-open-web/
======
TazeTSchnitzel
Facebook and Apple News might be "killing the open web", but Twitter? I'd say
Twitter is a great champion of the web. Linking is so fundamental to the
Twitter experience. Half of Twitter is links to other websites.

~~~
ThomPete
Exactly! Which is IMO actually one of the reasons why Twitter is having such a
hard time monetizing. I see them more like a router protocol where people are
pointed towards consuming content outside of twitter instead of on the twitter
platform.

My guess is that they will change exactly that sometime soon. First allowing
you to write longer texts as attachments and first then might join FB and
Apple in "killing the open web"

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Getting content directly through Twitter and being linked to it through
Twitter wouldn't change all that much from a monetisation standpoint. The
value of Twitter is in the interest graph.

~~~
mbrock
Is there no value also in how millions of people stare into its feed day and
night? Or the vast amounts of content created for free by its huge amount of
users who include both the influential and the aspiring?

~~~
ThomPete
Not really because they stare at the feed only to find something that then
lives somewhere else.

It's like being that guy the girls hang out with because you are good friends
with the handsome guy in school. You might get to hang out with them but in
the end they go home with your friend.

~~~
StephenCanis
People only stare at Google to find content that lives somewhere else. There
is alot of value of linking users to content they are interested in.

~~~
ThomPete
Thats not at all how Google works.

Google works because it give you a selection of what you are looking for right
now. It knows whats top of your mind and.

Twitter gives you things other people are interested in or find interesting.

They are in no way comparable.

One is letting you find things you are looking for, the other is mostly
showing things you don't care about sometimes things that are interesting to
you.

~~~
StephenCanis
I'm only pointing out that you don't need to host content to provide value.

~~~
ThomPete
Yeah but you are using the wrong example since twitter is not a search engine.

~~~
StephenCanis
Both Twitter and Google help you find information you're interested in. The
internet is massive so sorting and serving useful content to a user is
valuable.

Google finds this information based on keywords. Twitter finds this
information by looking at conversations and people you are interested in.

Saying Google and Twitter are in no way comparable isn't helpful. They are
comparable though certainly different!

Google has better information on your preferences and exactly what you're
interested in. That doesn't mean Twitter doesn't have good information.

If you follow a ton of yoga instructors then Twitter can feature yoga ads in
your feed. While not as targeted as Google ads they still provide value to the
user and the advertiser.

I don't want to get into an argument, just wanted to explain where I was
coming from.

~~~
ThomPete
No

Twitter lets you discover what happens in areas that you might be interested
in if someone wrote about it. It's a newsfeed for that specific reason. It
require a tweet to happen.

Google allow you to find exactly what you are looking for whether someone
tweeted it or not in all the content they can get a hold of including twitter.

Your search term on twitter does not show you intent, search on google does.

You are comparing two completely different things here.

Furthermore EVERYONE who uses google search use it to find things they are
looking for when they are most interested in it. Only some people use twitter
search terms to figure out who on twitter has something to say, mostly about
themselves.

People don't use twitter as a search engine but as a discovery engine the
difference is hugely different for so many reasons I am not sure why you keep
insisting on them being the same.

~~~
StephenCanis
I haven't insisted that they are the same! And I agree with your descriptions
of both companies. I didn't mention twitter search, I was actually only
thinking about the Twitter feed.

All I'm saying is that at a high level both services let you find content
you're interested in. That's it. It doesn't contrast with what you've said
above. They do it in very different ways and for very different use cases.

~~~
ThomPete
You said and I quote:

"People only stare at Google to find content that lives somewhere else."

Thats not what people do. They search google and then stare as those results.

Thats a completely different concept from staring at a twitter feed with
random things.

It's comparing apples and cars.

~~~
StephenCanis
A twitter feed isn't random though. You choose who you follow on Twitter, if
the links they provide are unhelpful you unfollow them. It is more random than
Google but still tailored to your preferences.

I think you're hung up on the "stare at" wording. I interpreted the words to
mean "use" \- hope that clarifies my point.

~~~
ThomPete
People use twitter in many different ways. You are assuming people carefully
select who they follow. Many people dont, they follow all sorts of people
often based on one tweet. You have no way of knowing what other stuff they are
going to write about because it's people. Furthermore a lot of people follow
thousands or hundreds of people and are simply not able to follow everything
thats going on in their feed.

Compared to a google search result it is completely in the opposite end

I am not hung up on anything. I am saying that your comparison is as wrong as
comparing DuckDuckGo with an RSS feed. There is so much noise even with the
things you carefully select.

Compared to a google search where I am going specifically for something and is
showing my intent.

I don't go to google to see whats going on, I go there to find something very
specific.

~~~
StephenCanis
I feel as though we've gone off topic here.

You said that twitter doesnt provide value "because they stare at the feed
only to find something that then lives somewhere else."

When you search Google you're finding things that live somewhere else. I'm
simply pointing out that you don't need to host the content the user is
looking for to provide value.

I'm not saying the companies are the same. I'm not saying Twitter can be
successful the same way Google has. I'm agreeing with all your points besides
the fact that you need to host content to provide value.

~~~
ThomPete
No I said their problem with monetization for twitter was that people don't
spend enough time on twitter but instead on the places that tweets lead to.

In other words they provide plenty of value they are just not able to make a
living from it.

Instead they should get more people to stay on their own platform by allowing
more content to be created there just like Facebook is.

~~~
StephenCanis
I agree getting more content on twitter is an good option for montetization.
It might even be the best one.

I brought up Google because time spent on a site doesn't necessarily mean a
whole lot more ad revenue. What matters is serving up useful ads that provide
value to the user and advertisers. Google is great at that - Twitter isn't
because of many reasons you've stated.

So maybe twitter should be trying to improve their ad program to serve better
ads. If they can't do that well (no way they could do it as well as Google)
then perhaps increasing time users spend on Twitter is their best option.

I only wanted to point out that the solution is not self evident. Just because
people are using a service to find content hosted elsewhere does not mean it
can't make money. The problem might be that Twitter is bad at finding ads
people want to see.

~~~
ThomPete
You brough up google because you claimed that google was making money on what
twitter wasn't able to and thats simply wrong.

~~~
StephenCanis
Ok

------
benten10
Disclaimer: I like twitter over facebook, which I don't use that much, and my
comment history will show that I'm a twitter 'lackey', so to speak.

Does anyone else feel that the facebook moment is fading away? People have
compared information to food, and I can see the similarities. When you come
from a place where there's little or no food, you want to hoard all you can --
why yes, I would love to see your babies pics every day, of course, post three
dozen photos of the same party from different angles, I love it, why yes, this
memory from seven years ago is exactly what I need. When you're saturated with
information (in this case, social media information), it doesn't feel as
special anymore. Soon, you realize that while looking at Christmas photos from
people you went to high school with, was fun for a while, there is only so
much space in your head and social energy. The marginal value of that extra
bit goes down, and averages start leveling off or going down. There's too much
food everywhere, you don't want to be forced with another plate of who-gives-
an-eff-about-your-fifth-Halloween-in-a-row. What was originally curiosity and
genuine excitement about other people's lives becomes social courtesy: of
course you will like your almost-friend's child's photos because that's what
good friends would do. Social networking (in facebook form) becomes
ritualistic.

So the solution is social networks that (artificially) limit your access to
information, such as snapchat and twitter. You want to only share a few
things, with a few people at a time, and perhaps that shared thing will
disappear in a couple of days/hours/views. To me that sounds like the long-
term future of social media.

Anyone have any thoughts?

~~~
ecdavis
There's a pretty big difference between communicating in and about the present
vs. communicating about the past. I think what you've identified is the
beginning of a distinction between those two activities in the technologies we
use.

My grandparents have a large collection of photos, each captioned with the
year, location, and the reason the photo was taken. Looking through these
photos is a great experience because it's a curated history of their lives.
For better or worse, the practice maintaining photo collections in that manner
has been made obsolete by technology. The equivalent now is to upload
everything and have technology curate it for you, filtering out the mundane
and saving the important or otherwise memorable content. That's what the
Facebook timeline attempts to do, and it's a feature missing from the other
social applications you identified.

I don't think it's a failure of Twitter or Snapchat that they lack curated
timelines, though. That's not their purpose. They are aimed squarely at
communicating at and about the present. If they do take over in-the-present
communication from Facebook, though, then Facebook will have a hard time
constructed the curated timeline.

All that being said, I don't use any of them.

~~~
benten10
>There's a pretty big difference between communicating in and about the
present vs. communicating about the past. I think what you've identified is
the beginning of a distinction between those two activities in the
technologies we use.

That's a great observation. I had not explored that line of reasoning. That
gives me something to chew on. Right off though, I'd say that... I suspect we
used to value communicating about the past more because it was so difficult to
do so, but as facebook makes it easier, the value has gone down.

How's this sound: before long epics were written down, the oral tradition of
reciting them kept them alive, and thus the entire process was valued. Once
they were written, it got easier to 'remember' the epics. S, writing was not
as valuable as orally remembering/reciting because it was easier/more
common/not as important? This is not the best comparison, but sounds right to
me at the moment.

~~~
jamiek88
Well,famously the Greek elders complained about the laziness of the modern
technology of writing the philosophy down rather than rote learning!

------
Tloewald
A big part of the problem is that "content" insists on being wrapped up in
"interactivity" that is confusing and subtracts value (or adds cost) in other
ways (image carousels with ads, articles broken into lots of small pieces to
generate impressions), and the internet routes around cost.

The central thesis that "pretending that content is free" is the underlying
problem is interesting. Perhaps part of the problem is bad pricing. E.g.
content that _ought_ to be cheap (e.g. e-books, streaming video) tends to be
more expensive or certainly insufficiently cheaper than content that ought to
be more expensive (e.g. physical books, bluray disks).

Perhaps a big part of the problem is publishers "pretending" they add value.

Some publishers definitely add _some_ value, but then they subtract value in
other ways -- it's great that the movie studio figures out who the good
writers, directors, and actors are and risks its own money to make a good
movie, but it's bad that it's provided on a bluray disk with annoying copy-
and-other protection in a hard-to-open package, and that it's more expensive
to buy the cheaper to distribute and generally more convenient electronic
version. Similarly, newyorker.com has great writing (and I pay for it) but the
actual presentation layer (the website) subtracts value from it.

------
oneeyedpigeon
> But the larger point is that the logic of efficiency on the internet will
> always favor scale—which is to say, platforms—over publishers.

I call bullshit on this one. It's unclear what the author means because they
use such a meaningless term in "logic of efficiency", but the last time I
looked, it was a lot more financially efficient to set up a website than a
print publication. There is nothing at all inevitable about 'the biggest will
win' online, as can be evidenced both by the disappearance of several former
behmoths, and by the failure of several pre-Internet companies to 'make it
big' online despite having unlimited capital to invest.

Maybe, just maybe, the author is referring directly to advertising revenue
here, as in "the more popular sites can make more money from advertising, and
thus will grow and grow". Of course, that's totally dismissing the fact that
many of the 'platforms' being discussed simply offer a far better experience,
regardless of what content they offer or how big they already are. Here's a
hint for the author and any other publishers reading: there is far greater
variation in the packaging, delivery, and experience of content online than
there is offline. Take advantage of that. Don't, as we've all been telling you
for the last 20 years, just try to replicate your newspaper online: that makes
for a horrible experience. Don't try to do advertising in the most obnoxious
manner you can get away with; that may have worked in print, but it's been
demonstrated pretty categorically now that it fails online.

Or, you know, just carry on regardless, blame platforms for seizing the
opportunity that you choose to ignore.

~~~
thomasz
I think you are wrong to dismiss that point so harshly, when all empirical
data shows it to be true. Engineering, Hosting, Marketing, Monetisation, all
those things are massively cheaper when done by one big player. There is a
reason publishers outsource advertisement to those shitty networks: They would
be overwhelmed by the cost to operate, let alone create those beasts. And even
when this problem would magically go away, they still lack the access to the
petabytes of data the big platforms enjoy. Without this data, the
advertisement will necessarily be crude and lacking focus.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
I'm not saying those things aren't cheaper for bigger players, but that the
playing field is more level online than it is off, at least in part because
the production cost per unit is much, _much_ less. I have yet to see the
advertising that benefits from petabytes of data such that it isn't 'crude and
lacking focus'. A lot of it has _a_ focus, but it's often a nonsensical one.

~~~
thomasz
> I'm not saying those things aren't cheaper for bigger players, but that the
> playing field is more level online than it is off, at least in part because
> the production cost per unit is much, much less.

I don't see how this is a relevant metric. The only thing that matters in that
regard are how much economy of scale favours the big players. It might be
cheap for anyone to start offering books online, but there is only amazon.

------
pjc50
A link recently discovered was blocked by facebook (and I had no idea they
were actively blocking the posting of links by users!):
eulawanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/the-partys-over-eu-data-protection-
law.html

~~~
jacquesm
Wow. Facebook actively blocking links discussing Facebook in a critical way is
very bad. Are you sure?

~~~
icebraining
Multiple users reported it here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10385612](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10385612)

~~~
onewaystreet
I find it strange that people are so quick to conclude censorship. Do they
really think Facebook cares what some blogspot blog thinks? Facebook
erroneously blocks links for a lot of reasons such as if many people report
the link or if the link gets more shares than the domain usually gets.

~~~
pjc50
"erroneously blocks links for a lot of reasons" is also a problem, whether
it's incompetence or conspiracy.

~~~
onewaystreet
With billions of links being shared on Facebook every day I suspect that they
error on the side of caution.

------
danieldk
Slightly related: I only found out recently that The Guardian has a
subscription option in their app (the 'Premium' tier, Euro 3.61 per month)
that removes all ads:

[https://www.theguardian.com/info/2013/aug/12/1](https://www.theguardian.com/info/2013/aug/12/1)

It's great to see that at least some publications are experimenting with
models outside the traditional paper and the obvious plastering content with
ads.

~~~
jacquesm
Does that mean they expect to extract 3.61 from the ad viewing portion and
they've set that price for parity? Interesting. That's rather a lot more than
one would expect.

~~~
corin_
One of the biggest perceived problems with this business model is that the
sort of person who would be willing to pay to remove adverts is the sort of
person advertisers most want to reach, since the people who won't pay for a
better experience are also less likely to either be able to or to want to
spend money on whatever is being advertised. I don't know if any data supports
that, but many people in the advertising industry have that opinion.

As such... I don't know about the numbers, I know very little about mobile
advertising in general, and while I am a Guardian reader I don't use their
mobile app - but my vague overall opinion is that it wouldn't surprise me if
they priced it higher to compensate for losing a higher quality segment of
their ad-viewing audience.

~~~
vlehto
>sort of person who would be willing to pay to remove adverts is the sort of
person advertisers most want to reach

People who wish to buy shit also exist. Some of them might actually want info
about their options.

Then there are people who are not annoyed by commercials and who are easily
manipulated to buy almost whatever. They ruin the adds for the rest of us.
They are probably poor, because advertisers already got all their money.

Personally I would love someone to advertice books to me. I've even subscribed
to goodreads for that, but their recommendations suck big time. (Though it's
still good for bookmarking what I want to read and reading reviews.)

~~~
corin_
Certainly there wouldn't be a 100% match between "would be worth advertising
to" and "would pay to remove adverts", but the problem is nobody (afaik) has
any data on to what extent it might correlate, and so are scared by it.

I wonder if companies like the Guardian have thought about trying to compare
between the two audiences, i.e. how people who now subscribe interacted with
adverts before subscring vs. audience that doesn't pay. Thinking of some of
the tracking tools that could be used... it wouldn't be impossible (though
wouldn't be imperfect data either), but it would be a rather complicated thing
to set-up so it wouldn't surprise me if they don't have it in place.

~~~
vlehto
Yes, your point still stands.

Further problem is that most people would probably prefer adds, but only in
very narrow subset of all products. And they might not want to share that
subset, not with modern privacy concerns and rogue advertisers. So you would
have almost infinite amount of groups and no way to find them.

------
Jgrubb
Irony is [http://imgur.com/mivdSRC](http://imgur.com/mivdSRC)

------
n0us
I do have to say, my experience with Apple News has been very nice. These apps
seem to affect publishers more than the 'open web' and at that they are little
more than nice RSS readers that don't ruin your experience with ads even
though there are still ads there.

I don't particularly see anything wrong with separating publishers from
content producers. It now seems more appropriate to think of news magazines
and traditional 'publishers' as content producers who rely on the new
'publishers' a la Facebook, Apple, Twitter to distribute their content because
they cannot and should not be focused on building an enormous infrastructure
to do this.

Print media is 'open' in that anyone can print something and distribute it but
the ability to do so effectively has pretty much been consolidated into the
hands of very few for a long time. Now a days you can publish your own music,
your own books, and your own news and its popularity will be determined by the
masses, not some worn out talent scout trying to please a boss who is using
focus groups to figure out what might make him a buck.

Ultimately I think we will see a more open and democratic future for
publishing, not the death of the open web. Control is shifting hands to a new
set of publishers, one that puts the visibility of content into the hands of
the readers in the form of likes and tweets.

Maybe the news produced by these traditional outlets just doesn't have as much
value as it once did. That is what likely scares them in my mind.

------
acqq
> Mostly, I get my news from Twitter.

This should be the first thing to read in this article. The author seems to
not have any preferred publisher anyway. He can consider and write why not,
I'd also like to know.

Then don't be surprised with the statement in a paragraph before:

> And that’s why so many articles kinda sound the same these days.

------
ScottGillis
I find the author’s argument regarding “publications losing their voice and
not focusing on the preferences of their audience to meet the preference of
the platform’s audience” self-contradictory. Is it not your own audience that
is following you on these platforms? More so, the platforms give you real-time
feedback and allow your audience to tell you which issues are most important.
I find this to be the real issue here. The author is most interested in
telling you what is important, instead of allowing you to decide for yourself.
…And this is why certain publications struggle with these platforms.

~~~
ArekDymalski
>platforms give real time feedback..

Unfortunately often it's not completely honest feedback about your content.
It's feedback filtered / deformed by the fact that other people on the
platform will see the likes, retweets, comments etc As a result it's not the
best content that becomes popular. It's the one used to impress others.

------
phkahler
I don't need an ad-blocker. I need a like blocker. When I go on facebook I
want to see personal things my friends share, not a bunch of shit they saw and
clicked "like" on. And I'm guilty of "liking" crap too. Maybe they could
prioritize personal plain text posts, since those are actually the most
relevant to me. But that is least relevant to advertisers.

If they don't focus more on the users, a distributed replacement will
eventually come out and there will be zero ad revenue to be had from that
social platform. I've got some ideas in this space, but no time and no team.

~~~
intrasight
FB Purity does a pretty good job of this

~~~
phkahler
Thank you. I was not aware of that!

------
SeanDav
Completely OT: You know that phenomenon that when you hear a word for the
first time in a long time or first time ever - and then you suddenly hear it
again and again? Just happened to me with the word "Fungible". I happen to
know what the word means, coming from a financial/trading background but don't
recall hearing it for some time now. Then 2 completely unrelated Hacker News
articles I read, almost in a row, had the word "Fungible" in them - neither of
which had anything to do with finance/trading!

I know it is just random chance, but it feels really strange!

~~~
FlailFast
Good ole Baader Meinhof phenomenon. True story: I learned about it after
hearing "Baader Meinhof" thrown around one too many times. :)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader-
Meinhof_phenomenon#Freq...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader-
Meinhof_phenomenon#Frequency_illusion)

~~~
rogeryu
That page doesn't explain it properly. Try this one:

[http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/theres-a-name-for-
tha...](http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/theres-a-name-for-that-the-
baader-meinhof-phenomenon-59670)

> Stanford linguistics professor Arnold Zwicky coined the former term in 2006
> to describe the syndrome in which a concept or thing you just found out
> about suddenly seems to crop up everywhere. It’s caused, he wrote, by two
> psychological processes. The first, selective attention, kicks in when
> you’re struck by a new word, thing, or idea; after that, you unconsciously
> keep an eye out for it, and as a result find it surprisingly often. The
> second process, confirmation bias, reassures you that each sighting is
> further proof of your impression that the thing has gained overnight
> omnipresence.

> The considerably catchier sobriquet Baader-Meinhof phenomenon was invented
> in 1994 by a commenter on the St. Paul Pioneer Press’ online discussion
> board, who came up with it after hearing the name of the ultra-left-wing
> German terrorist group twice in 24 hours. The phrase became a meme on the
> newspaper’s boards, where it still pops up regularly, and has since spread
> to the wider Internet. It even has its own Facebook page. Got all that?
> Don’t worry. You’ll hear about it again soon.

------
bitcuration
This is simpler than most people think. If there is no ad time/place, the
platform won't be able to monetize it. Google makes people go away, but right
before that people look at their search result where the Ads are displayed.

Why it doesn't work twitter, probably nobody follow the news link and bother
come back to strike a conversation on twitter. Mostly the conversation takes
place right below the news article and with the author not the tweet.

Most online conversation took place right where the content is at, on Youtube,
on NYtimes, on Forbes, unless compassion with twitter but now we that passion
is going down.

There is also a subtle difference of the social relation where the news feed
is from, which is why facebook news feed is a BAD idea. Why would I have my
mother in law in my facebook circle yet sharing the latest Intel acquisition
news, or even makeing comment.

Never mix life and work, even hobby or side projects, that's social network
101, or platform 101. I know a friend who has 9 facebook Ids, I personally
have 3,4 twitter accounts, for the purpose explained here.

From a news consumption standpoint, iOS news is a joke, facebook news is
meaningless, twitter is inconvenient, therefore I use Zite, which connects to
my twitter.

From a conversation standpoint, Hacker news format is idea, but lack of
twitter's networking.

Something has all these together would be a hit.

------
cwyers
The article doesn't define the "open web," and platforms like Facebook and
Twitter would seem to mostly follow the dictates set out in Tantek's original
definition.[1] So it's hard to guess at what the author means -- Facebook and
Twitter aren't "the open web" by tautology, basically. It's really hard to
engage with the author's arguments that way.

What is trivial to understand is that the author's proposed remedy doesn't
work:

> The answer is simple, but it isn’t easy. We need to stop pretending that
> content is free. Publications need to ask readers to pay for their content
> directly, and readers need to be willing to give up money, as opposed to
> their privacy and attention. This means that publications will have to
> abandon the rapid-growth business models driven by display ads, which have
> driven them to rely on Facebook for millions of pageviews a month.

The fundamental problem with this is that siloing content the way the author
suggests (publications with strong identities and paywalls to get readers to
give money in exchange for content) breaks hyperlinks. It breaks sharing.
Paywalls work when there's a marginal benefit to knowing something that
someone else doesn't -- say, it helps you pick stocks better than the next
guys. Otherwise, all else being equal, the article I can share with my
friends, link to in my blog post, that I can engage with and respond to and
have other people able to read the same article I am -- that's far more
valuable than the article that I can read but can't share. We didn't get here
because we're all stupid, or because people are unwilling to pay for anything
ever. We got here because we were trying to come up with a model that allows
people who make content to be compensated for it without betraying the
fundamental thing that made the Web the Web -- the hyperlink. If your proposed
alternative business model doesn't even TRY to engage with the question of
linking and sharing, it's not going to work.

1) [http://tantek.com/2010/281/b1/what-is-the-open-
web](http://tantek.com/2010/281/b1/what-is-the-open-web)

~~~
pauleastlund
What is a page view on an article worth these days? A couple cents? Less? If
the micropayments implementation was right, and if paying for content became a
more mainstream idea, I don't think you'd feel that you "[could] read but
[couldn't] share" an article just because it charged a nickel to continue past
the intro paragraph. I don't see how that would break hyperlinks.

~~~
cwyers
Behavior economics suggests that you're wrong[1]. Users do not like metered
useage even when it benefits them. An anecdotal illustration of this at work:

> What was the biggest complaint of AOL users? Not the widely mocked and
> irritating blue bar that appeared when members downloaded information. Not
> the frequent unsolicited junk e-mail. Not dropped connections. Their
> overwhelming gripe: the ticking clock. Users didn’t want to pay by the hour
> anymore. ... Case had heard from one AOL member who insisted that she was
> being cheated by AOL’s hourly rate pricing. When he checked her average
> monthly usage, he found that she would be paying AOL more under the flat-
> rate price of $19.95. When Case informed the user of that fact, her reaction
> was immediate. ‘I don’t care,’ she told an incredulous Case. ’I am being
> cheated by you.’

The transactional friction between "free" and "not free" is high, even for
very small values of "not free." This has been backed up by experiments[2]:

> In his book Predictably Irrational, Ariely describes a series of simple
> experiments that offered subjects something desirable – chocolate – at a
> variety of prices. Two types of chocolate were used – a Hershey’s kiss and a
> Lindt chocolate truffle. While the kiss is an inexpensive and common treat,
> a Lindt truffle is a far more tasty confection that costs an order of
> magnitude more than the kiss.

> The first experiment offered subjects a truffle for 15 cents (about half its
> actual cost) or a kiss for 1 cent. Nearly three out of four subjects chose
> the truffle, which seems logical enough based on the relative value of the
> offers.

> The next experiment reduced the price of each product by one cent – the
> truffle was offered at 14 cents, and the kiss was free. Although the price
> differential remained the same, the behavior of the subjects changed
> dramatically: more than two thirds of the subjects chose the free chocolate
> kiss over the bargain-priced truffle.

It's not about getting the right micropayment system, it's about overcoming
something about how humans understand and deal with price signals. You can
either sit around trying to rewire people or you can come up with a business
model designed for people. Micropayments as a business model for web content
is wishcasting.

1)
[http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/case.against.micropaymen...](http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/case.against.micropayments.pdf)
2) [http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/the-
power...](http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/the-power-of-
free.htm)

~~~
maxerickson
The Case anecdote doesn't address her desired usage (at least not as presented
in the pdf). Maybe she ends up using the service a great deal more at the flat
rate, with it's significantly lower marginal price.

It'd be nice if it laid out her perception of what would be fair (we have
roughly one data point, that the hourly rate at the time the conversation
happened is unfair) and what the economics looked like for AOL (perhaps they
could have substantially reduced the hourly price but were good at math and
figured that a flat rate was the more profitable path).

~~~
cwyers
The flat rate would have been a guaranteed higher monthly bill that what she
was paying at the time, for as you point out potentially higher usage. But if
her desired price to pay was $20, and her average monthly bill was n, where n
is below $20, why wasn't she already using the service more, at the rate of
$20-n?

And, again, the AOL anecdote was an illustration, not evidence. See the
truffle study, we know more about this than your response suggests.

~~~
maxerickson
Her stated reason was that the hourly price was unfair. This suggests that it
was a couple dollars an hour:

[http://ask.metafilter.com/101477/Cost-of-the-intertubes-a-
de...](http://ask.metafilter.com/101477/Cost-of-the-intertubes-a-decade-
ago#1473308)

So we have an anecdote about marginal pricing going from $1 or $2 (or more) to
$0 being used as an illustration that people don't like metering.

If AOL had costs of $0.20 an hour, her perception that their pricing was a
ripoff probably wasn't ridiculous.

(I'm not trying to refute you, I was making the perhaps not very useful
argument that the anecdote was not a good illustration, because it left too
many loose ends. It's compelling because AOL is famous and her behavior is
easy to cast as ridiculous, but it wouldn't be real surprising if it was told
in a way that was useful to AOL.)

------
intrasight
Apps are doing much more to kill the open web than is any browser-based
service.

------
zxcvvcxz
I never understand these articles. No they're not. You're not required to use
these two (out of billions of) websites.

Vote with your time and attention. For better or worse, the majority of people
vote for these sites.

------
ck2
Remember how we were talking last week about how people seem to desire crowds
and crowd-thinking, even if it literally kills them?

Well that makes sites like Facebook and Twitter predictable and the power they
wield.

------
tmikaeld
Also slightly related:

Facebook is actively blocking a rival community that "pays" users by passing
ad revenue to users (users get incentives to post content and invite friends)

[http://www.wired.com/2015/11/facebook-banning-tsu-rival-
soci...](http://www.wired.com/2015/11/facebook-banning-tsu-rival-social-
network/)

~~~
halflings
Tsu is basically a pyramid scheme where the investment is your time. The
"payments" they would give to their users are _tiny_ , not enough for people
to actually get any money out (except some outliers), and all what people are
talking about on Tsu is: getting referrals to Tsu, making money from Tsu.

Somehow, Morocco was among the countries that used Tsu the most, and being
Moroccan I was myself continuously spammed by people posting referral links to
Tsu... so it's understandable that facebook blocked them.

~~~
chipsy
The pyramid scheme analogy only holds true if you are paying in with money,
not time. Other social networks are investments of time too.

Testimony: I registered for Tsu and have been active on it a for a few days
after reading that story. There is nothing within the site that pushes
monetization at you - there is a tab for payments, but it does not direct you
there, and I didn't look at it until just now. When I did, I was presented
with a terms of service, and then a "no spamming" click-through agreement.

Therefore I have to conclude that all of the hubbub is generated by some
combination of early external marketing efforts and the natural tendencies of
wishful thinkers. They've decided to stop pushing that angle, most likely
because they hit their critical mass targets and can move on towards more
sustainable growth options.

------
vlehto
"It only really makes sense if you view writing as a fungible commodity"

I have no sympathy for writers here. You view us readers as fungible
commodity. I use Reddit, HN, Facebook and twitter to weed out the worst
bullshit. There are lots of articles around just to keep me comfy long enough
to show me adds. One of the worst these days is New Yorker, beautifully
written articles about stuff people don't really care about. (Or atleast I
don't care about.) Currently it survives on elitism. Web platforms are
problematic. But lot better than ordering magazines at random, or paying for
New Yorker monthly for that yearly gem.

“Go where the readers are”

It's more important to write what the readers want to read. I click stupid
shit. I read mediocre pieces. I'm willing to pay for good stuff.

I think there should be ordering/crowd funding service solely for written
media. So that authors don't just babble nice sentences inside their comfort
zone, but actually tackles things people are interested in.

The real problem is that author doesn't know if s/he gets paid before the
article is written, but also the reader doesn't know if the article is worth
anything before reading it.

I think the author of this piece has many good points, he just needs to dig
deeper. This bleak context free future the author is painting is probably not
true. People like context. Any social meeting is often first superficial
introductions, then shallow gossip and only later dvelves into deep stuff.
Internet is probably going to mirror that, but with more inertia.

------
softyeti
The article seems to be confused over content viewed by way of advertisement
and content delivered by users actively seeking content.

When I want to read up on some news, I go to the publisher's site directly or
to a preferred aggregator, which is not going to be facebook/twitter/etc.

Advertised content is typically very poor, and really not worth defending.

------
morninj
On mobile, this page has a sticky banner at the bottom of the screen with a
Facebook "like" button and a message asking me to "stay connected."

------
chillingeffect
Just like cable and CB radio, we need the government to reserve a section of
the internet for non-commercial open access.

~~~
noarchy
Why does the government need to do such a thing? You're free to set up your
own corner of the Internet, unless the _government_ itself tries to stop you,
which does happen to some people in this world.

~~~
chillingeffect
brb, digging along the highway to lay my fibers.

srsly, it depends on the medium. With Citizen's Band radio, the government
only had to step out of the way. With Cable public-access, the government had
to require cable companies to give access to communities to equipment such as
a cameras, studios, video players, etc. Public access internet's needs are
much closer to those of community access television than Citizen's band.

~~~
noarchy
>With Cable public-access, the government had to require cable companies to
give access to communities to equipment such as a cameras, studios, video
players, etc.

I don't even see why public access cable was forced on any company to begin
with. The only reason that comes to mind that the public would even be
entitled to free access to the company's facilities is the monopoly status
that telecoms have often enjoyed in North America. In that case, a bit of
give-and-take might be expected. But otherwise, I don't see much of a case for
forcing a company to let people use its facilities for free.

> Public access internet's needs are much closer to those of community access
> television than Citizen's band.

This seems like a dubious "need". I can rent a VPS for a few dollars a month
and generally do with it whatever I'd like. The barrier to entry is
surprisingly-low, in that regard.

~~~
chillingeffect
> I don't even see why public access cable was forced on any company to begin
> with.

That's a great question... and the fact that we have to consider it is a
testament to how thoroughly the corporate-state has succeeded in refiguring
our concepts of natural resources and democratic participation.

The justification is that natural resources are the property of the people
with the government managing them as an entity where distributed individuals
can not. The key is to realize that not only clean, safe, air and water are
resources, but also the wireless spectrum is a resource and the infrastructure
to support cable television. Hence entities like the FCC to manage these
natural resources. When the cable television infrastructure was set up, it was
clear it was going to be an enormous windfall for the corporations at the cost
of public and private land.

It was also going to divert attention, including sources of information
necessary for running a democracy, such as the ability to organize
communities, away from existing media. They were afraid we would become an
isolated nation of television-watching dummies. (Imagine that!). Furthermore,
access to these public resources is not free. You have to pay, further
limiting the ability for everyone to participate. So in negotiation with these
industries, our government from several generations ago gained us the right to
participate for free in the communications process through community access
television. It wasn't perfect, but it was a serious attempt at democracy, the
town hall process through which everyone gets a say.

As opposed to the market sense of democracy, in which expression and
participation in governance is cheap, but still costs money. That's what
you're talking about when you say "I can rent a VPS for a few dollars a month
and generally do with it whatever I'd like." The issue here is that while
"noarchy," a Hacker News reader for over five years, who could probably be
considered an expert and well beyond the top 1% of skill level in their field
can express his desires, that's cool and the gang, but that doesn't further
democracy, the ability for everyone to take part in the governing of their
lives and country for free.

It's worth pointing out that the effect on cable companies has been absolutely
minimal. They've never been burdened by this requirement, just look at the
billion dollar mergers. Also, the FCC has finally pushed off the corporate
forces of NPR and allowed Low-Power FM radio for community organizing.

I hope my discussion has been persuasive to you. You seem bright, but maybe
just a little overtaken with the notion of pure meritocracy - in this case
meaning that people get to express themselves once they've earned enough money
to produce the media to do so.

If you look at history over the last century, you'll notice that the cellular
bandwidth allocation, with absolutely no concessions to the public, as
resulted again in overwhelming corporate success and greater community
isolation. It's a shame, I wish we could get back to the days of CB radio, but
I have high hopes for Low-Power FM.

~~~
noarchy
I just wanted to mention that I did read your reply, but I've yet to take the
time (and some time would be needed) for a proper response to what is a bit of
a wall of text (in the context of HN, at least, I'd say). I may eventually do
so, despite the somewhat patronizing tone of your message.

------
api
I think this is hyperbole. I rarely use either and the open web seems fine.

~~~
m1sta_
How's your blackberry ;)

------
draw_down
No, no. Not Facebook and Twitter. This is coming from everywhere. Because you
can't sell the open internet as a branded experience. (And you can't force
people to look at ads on it either)

------
Kinnard
Beautifully written article on articles.

------
thadd
Probably not a dumb hypothesis, but this author turns this into a lament about
the changes in publishing. Next.

------
calebm
Gotta love the Facebook and Twitter buttons at the bottom of the article :)

------
transfire
I wish that every ISP was required to collect a "Distributed Content Fee" that
every domain would get a portion of according to the number of visits they
get. I think that would really help level the playing field. A lot of good
content goes unrewarded (or uncreated) b/c their is no good way to monetize
it.

~~~
alecco
You mean your ISP tracking every move you make? Seriously?

~~~
DanBC
You think your ISP doesn't already know exactly where you're going on the
Internet?

~~~
alecco
That's why I use HTTPS and an independent DNS server with encryption. It's not
exactly hard.

~~~
andreasvc
I don't get why you're so dismissive. Your ISP still sees that your IP
connects to the IP of some server, at what time, for how long, how much data,
etc. That's plenty of information.

------
eertami
Facebook is for closed networks. Twitter has literally no effect on the real
world and is only cared about by the people on twitter.

Neither are really a problem.

~~~
Spooky23
Twitter is tough because it's so useful and cool in one sense, but the
majority of its use is keeping "social media managers" occupied with something
the appears to be work.

I've rarely seen non-IT people using it.

~~~
realityking
IT people and politicians in my experience

And by politicians I mean not just those already established but also those in
youth organizations.

------
cubano
Killing the open web? Not hardly...

> I had a blog once. It wasn’t big, but I loved knowing who I was writing for.
> I loved knowing that the same couple hundred people would come back again
> and again...

Had a "blog once"? And your a writer? Why did you stop writing for it?

This is the same article that could have been written by musicians 12 years
ago or the MPAA 8yo...yes yes existential threats to the fundamental nature
blah blah fucking blah...

Don't get me twisted tho...I don't even _like_ Facebook and Twitter anymore
due to their obscene popularity, but whining about them "killing the open
web"?

Please just stop the hyperbole.

~~~
Aoyagi
> your a writer?

Amusing.

