Comment by wdewind | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wdewind | Hacker News Reader

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> Too much politics, too much inane nonsense. Yet I feel compelled to go there.

A valid criticism of facebook, but that's not at all what he's talking about. He's saying that to the extent that he uses facebook for his career (ie: marketing his books), he feels that he's giving away the contents of his book and that is ultimately hurting sales:

Professionally, I’m thinking it may be good for one’s career and business to be off social media altogether. Chris Anderson was wrong. “Free” doesn’t lead to anything but more free. Working for free isn’t leverage to do a talk for loads of money; now they even want you to talk for free. What am I supposed to do? Join YouTube and get three cents for every 100,000 views of my video? That is crap; that is insane!

It's a completely ridiculous notion that's contrary to what anyone who is making money in the digital economy has figured out: digital content is marketing for stuff you can charge for. The fact that Rushkoff can't find stuff to charge for is indicative of a painful truth that he should consider: he's actually not creating that much value.

He complains about getting 3c for every 100k youtube views, but never at all considers justifying why people should listen to him, simply that it costs him time to create this content.

It's actually a pretty marxist philosophy (the labor theory of value), and it has huge limitations in terms of describing our economy.

That's a rather ill-informed view of Rushkoff.

Rushkoff has been charging for stuff since before Eternal September. He has a track record of making things happen that dates back to a time before "startup" was a word with an online scene associated with it.

>never at all considers justifying why people should listen to him, simply that it costs him time to create this content.

I suspect he's done a lot more considering than many HN readers have.

It's true that Rushkoff is making - and has always made - the dissenting point that perhaps the Internet should be more than a machine for extracting cash and attention from the people who use it.

In fact he's suggesting that the most useful models are the ones that contribute to users instead of trying to battery farm their time - and also that "creating shareholder value" really isn't the most sophisticated or interesting of all possible social and economic goals.

I don't doubt some people find his views threatening. Personally, I don't see any reason to dismiss them out of hand without at least trying to understand them first.

I've actually met him and talked about his beliefs as well as read a lot of what he's written. I quite like him, but I think he frequently gets the broad strokes correct but misses on the details, and I don't think this is the first instance where he's done so.

> It's true that Rushkoff is making - and has always made - the dissenting point that perhaps the Internet should be more than a machine for extracting cash and attention from the people who use it.

And I'm disagreeing with the premise that it is just a cash extracting machine, because it is so only in the most simplistic and overly cynical of analyses. I get that it hasn't solved world hunger, and I get that there are many problems, but I think if Rushkoff understood how the web functioned at a deeper technical level he'd feel a lot less strongly about his beliefs. Similar to the Marxists that form the foundation of his beliefs, if he actually had to implement his ideas in real life he'd understand why they aren't a panacea.

Besides that there are quite a few Youtubers making a decent living. Also it's more like $100 for every 100k Youtube views.

If you choose to put preroll ads on your video. Thats not always the best idea when you're making videos for reasons of marketing, as he would be.

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