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Comment by braythwayt | Hacker News Reader

It’s not a dichotomy, so I will just say that in addition to circumventing the app store’s take, developers have users to “blame” for the race-to-the-bottom of the surveillance capitalism bucket.

As long as users will balk at paying even 4.99 for an app, developers will make them free and then engage in dark business models like surveillance and terrible in-app purchases.

To be fair and stop “blaming the victims,” this is a classic hard problem in psychology: The purchase price is an immediate, objective cost. Surveillance and the possibility of getting sucked into in-app purchases are subjective, uncertain costs with consequences in the future.

In aggregate, humans are really bad at making those judgments, trebly so when other humans are rigging the game to make the judgment difficult to evaluate.

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The problem is that app developers often just do both. They charge, but still use adverts.

You see this in games in particular. Paying removes /most/ adverts. However it does not remove the “watch an advert to get an extra life” style adverts. I assume it also does not remove any ad tracking.

I can't speak to all games, but the pay-once games I've seen have been free of this. No advertising at all, beyond the little ads for their DLC (if they have any.)

> As long as users will balk at paying even 4.99 for an app

Out of interest, what is the refund policy in the app store? I know, for example, I'm way more chilled about paying for "unknown" steam games when I can refund them after an hour of play if I don't like them.

You can refund purchases for up to 14 days. I consider this a somewhat well-kept secret, because nobody seems to make use of this.

How do you make use of this? It does not seem to be an obvious part of the app store.

Click "report a problem" in the invoice link they email you after a purchase. It isn't very obvious.

It is indeed not very obvious:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204088

I heard you even get to keep stuff you wanted to get a refund for. But I haven’t tried this.

I think they will refund almost automatically (seems like up to 14 days based on another comment). In my experience you need to wait a while (maybe a week?) until the charge registers. After that you can get a refund.

Psychology definitely plays a role in biasing how people interpret things they see and their priorities, but I think much of this is better understood through an economic lens.

If you consider the actions you take to preserve your privacy, it's a strategy you developed over time. And no one can claim to have a formula for devising the perfect strategy when there are non-trivial unknowns. This isn't just common, but normal in economics.

An economic actor can a. estimate the potential costs and benefits, b. observe other actors' strategy and outcomes but must ultimately c. execute their own strategy.

None of these are fully rational, and you have scarce resources (time & money, ability to survey the problem, limited exposure to the actions and consequences of other actors) to allocate to A and B.

If everything works, you stick to your strategy. If you get burned, you adjust your strategy in response. (Though a strategy may be "eat a cost less than $X.")

And if you observe it working for others or others getting burned, you might also adjust your strategy. This does lead to a natural selection of successful strategies; actors are "eventually optimal."

The solution I believe still lies in Apple's court.

Say you have an app that is a niche app with a 7 day free trial and a one-time purchase. How does this look to the user? Exactly like every other freemium/ad riddled/subscription/pay-to-play app. The download button says "Get" and underneath it you see "In-App Purchases Available." User expectations are destroyed at the download page.

One part of the solution is to allow developers to actually define an app as a time limited free trial. Make the download button say "START FREE TRIAL" and underneath "$4.99 to Purchase". Let the user buy or take the free trial from the App Store...but most importantly let them know that it isn't yet another subscription app, or something riddled with ads (Even going so far as to add an app review check that will look for ad network connections to ensure compliance.)

Apple has created a system where user's are now afraid of in-app purchases, because they allowed kids games to be riddled with them and other apps to setup up predatory free trial structures with weekly renewals (And until recently, buried the subscriptions page in a few levels of settings menus.)

The app store already works like this. They clearly mark subscription apps like this, including free trials.

But free trials are never really free: after 14 days when you've probably already forgotten about the app, your card gets charged. There needs to be a proper way to try stuff without slyly charging them.

Maybe ask them outright at the end of the trial if they want to carry on?

That’s also already built in by Apple. Free trials don’t automatically turn into paid subscription unless you tell them to.

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