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Comment by austenallred | Hacker News Reader

I don't think so. Facebook doesn't say "This is free with ads!" It says it's free to use. It just so happens that ads are byproduct of using it.

It's pretty obvious in the documentation and on every page except for the original product announcement that it's ad supported, but I don't expect Amazon to use a bunch of their 200-word product announcement to justify why there are ads.

The important point is that it's free, meaning I don't pay for it with dollars. When is the last time a free product shouted "BTW it's only free because of ads?!" I felt like it was implied, and I don't expect marketing to be like, "And here are the tradeoffs you have to make and that you might not like." When you download an app from the current app store (Apple or Google) it says "Free," even if the app includes ads.

I don't feel slighted one bit.

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Well, "free" means there is no consideration on the part of the party receiving what would be deemed as a gift. Looking at ads and having your data sold is not free by any means.

It doesn't mean that at all. Free (gratis), by definition, means you don't have to pay for anything. You don't spend dollars. Watching TV is free. Using Google and Facebook are free. You download free apps from the app store. And those all have ads.

If you want to repurpose the word to mean "free with no ads" you can do that, but you can't expect others to hold to that definition.

So you think the Free Software Foundation should really be called the Ad-Supported Software Foundation?

"Free" and "ad-supported" mean completely different things, and always have done.

> "Free" and "ad-supported" mean completely different things, and always have done.

"Free" in the context Amazon is using it (what Richard Stallman would refer to as Gratis) means that I do not have to pay money for something. That is a literal economic/dictionary definition.

Therefore, ad-supported in this context is a subset of "Free," as is any other form of non-monetary subsidization. So long as the end user is not paying, it is free.

The Free Software Foundation is free, but not ad-supported (though it strives to be free both in the sense "libre" (open/available) and "gratis" (not costing dollars).

No, "ad supported" is not a subset of free.

If you show ads you're costing your users brain cycles and creating distraction and friction. The cost isn't monetary, but it's still a real indirect cost.

If it wasn't a real cost, ad-blockers would hardly be as popular as they are - and the ad industry wouldn't be quite so worried about them.

IMO the idea that anyone can believe the two models are identical from the user's point of view is not encouraging.

You're confusing something entirely different here. "Free" in "Free Software Foundation" is free as in freedom to use for any purpose[0][1], rather than free price. You should not use this example to argue whether "free price" implies "ad-free".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software_movement

At the very least, I have to pay for it with my time, which is unrecoverable. If I can skip or otherwise ignore an ad, that is one thing, but forced interstitials is even more nebulous than a banner ad.

It's not free if I have to spend time servicing your revenue stream, unless you reimburse me at my market rate for my time that you spent/wasted.

That gets into a very hairy definition of "free." How much did Hacker News pay you for the time you spent commenting? Probably not market rate. Yet we'd still probably say that Hacker News is free.

I've never seen an interstitial on HN. Have you?

So, it's free unless there's an interstitial ad? That seems like an awfully random place to draw the line.

It's free if I suffer no cost. Do you bait and then throw up some monstrosity of an ad in a forced attempt to brainwash me? Or, maybe you don't bait and just force me to watch the ad. Either way, I suffer some cost, in the very least in having to detect the attempt and retreat from your page.

To act like that is not a real cost is...baffling.

It's not that that's not a real cost. Is that you don't include intangible things such as time and emotions when determining if something is free, by any expected usage of the word.

Hold on. My account balances are represented in a purely digital form. Almost all have no real physical record, at least not in sufficient detail or accessibility to be comparable to the digital form (in most cases it would probably be impossible to recover from a complete loss of the digital form). Most people here who use traditional banks and credit cards are probably in a similar situation. You are telling me that these numbers ($$$) that exist only as a pure digital artifact in some bank's database is a 'tangible thing'? But the time spent on the horrific and unsolicited intimate experience that you put me through with your ad is 'intangible'?

wut?

I should have said non-monetary.

The way Amazon is using "free" the definition means that you don't pay money for it. Full stop.

There are other ways of calculating what your "costs" are, such as including opportunity cost (what you're referring to as "time wasted." If you use that definition of "free," literally nothing is ever free, as you're always forgoing something else.

Yes, all the time. HN advertises jobs for y combinator companies and those ads are placed in between actual news stories.

There's a difference between telling a lie and being sneaky. Amazon didn't lie about this, it's true. But they definitely spent a lot of time implying that you'd be getting the same app you'd get elsewhere, just for free. Whether or not you consider the addition of ads to qualify as the same app or not is another question.

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