> No one actually likes this stuff, and it still exists everywhere, so it must be worth it.
I believe I covered that too, but maybe not explicitly enough. The root of the problem is that engaging in bad practices is a) allowed, and b) is profitable on the margin. In a competitive environment, this creates a zero-sum game, and that alone is enough of an explanation. Quoting myself from the article:
If you have competitors, you can't not participate.
> But those are just the cost of consuming all our favorite content for ~free, right?
It's not like we're being given much of a choice. Most people have less money than they need to satisfy even just the reasonable needs and wants, so being extremely price-sensitive is the default state for customers. In this environment, "free with ads" is a one-way strategy: it's impossible to compete on price with "free", so once someone goes for this model, all their direct competitors are forced to follow suit. It's why I see "free + ads" as an extremely anti-competitive move: it prevents any other business model from working.
> The size of the company has to be a major factor here. If your local shop takes out an ad in the local newspaper, I don't care what weird psychological tactics they use, does it really hit the same way?
It can be a factor, but I think its effect is often inverse. Large companies are a big, fat target for lawyers and regulators; there's only so much they can get away with these days. Small businesses can and do get much more scammy without repercussion, because their impact is much smaller and localized, and they're individually too small a target for the legal system to bother.
Also let's remember that, while small local companies are small and local, there's also a lot of them. And even as their "weird psychological tactics" affect only few people in each case, it isn't much of a consolation when you're one of those people.
I believe I covered that too, but maybe not explicitly enough. The root of the problem is that engaging in bad practices is a) allowed, and b) is profitable on the margin. In a competitive environment, this creates a zero-sum game, and that alone is enough of an explanation. Quoting myself from the article:
If you have competitors, you can't not participate.
> But those are just the cost of consuming all our favorite content for ~free, right?
It's not like we're being given much of a choice. Most people have less money than they need to satisfy even just the reasonable needs and wants, so being extremely price-sensitive is the default state for customers. In this environment, "free with ads" is a one-way strategy: it's impossible to compete on price with "free", so once someone goes for this model, all their direct competitors are forced to follow suit. It's why I see "free + ads" as an extremely anti-competitive move: it prevents any other business model from working.
> The size of the company has to be a major factor here. If your local shop takes out an ad in the local newspaper, I don't care what weird psychological tactics they use, does it really hit the same way?
It can be a factor, but I think its effect is often inverse. Large companies are a big, fat target for lawyers and regulators; there's only so much they can get away with these days. Small businesses can and do get much more scammy without repercussion, because their impact is much smaller and localized, and they're individually too small a target for the legal system to bother.
Also let's remember that, while small local companies are small and local, there's also a lot of them. And even as their "weird psychological tactics" affect only few people in each case, it isn't much of a consolation when you're one of those people.