Free Is Too High a Price for Facebook and Google | Hacker News Reader

Free Is Too High a Price for Facebook and Google

wsj.com

74 pointsdsr1252 comments

One key point about the free and/or zero marginal cost "products" that I think economists haven't yet dealt with is: massive imbalances between revenue generated by a product and the cost of producing it.

Facebook is the cleanest example. Compare to BMW. If we cut BMW's annual budget by 50%, we'd get about 50% fewer cars. If we do the same to FB, we'd get approximately the same FB.

FB's revenue happens to be about $65bn per annum. But, the cost of making Facebook available to all its users is basically arbitrary. If Facebook had happened to produce just $6.5bn, I expect that the value/features users get would have been about the same.

A lot of the investment (eg uber) in such products goes towards pure (kinda zero-sum) competition. IE, a big chunk of the investment in Uber wasn't needed (or beneficial) for consumers to get the benefit of Uber. It was just needed to ensure Uber captured market share.

This has potentially worrying implications for economic efficiency.

This has been the case since at least the 1990s, maybe earlier.

That strategy has always emphasized market-share over profitability.

It seems to work out better for software than physical produced goods.

Focusing on Uber will give a particularly uncharitable view IMO.

I work in tech and the majority of work we do is to either explore new products or increase the efficiency of the core business by a percentage.

Neither of these are inherently aimed at competition.

What is the cost of privacy? How much would you pay to have total control of your data? Because that’s the price of Facebook / Google.

At least with Google, you can get some modicum if privacy and improved security by paying for G-Suite on a private domain (you have way more control of your data policy that way). But it doesn’t change the fact that >90% of their revenue and nearly all their profit comes from advertising.

Facebook is pure cancer, and should die in a fire.

You get privacy with Google ? Root your phone and check how often your Android phones home 1e100.net . Even the stupidest of things like opening the phone settings will make Android to call up big brother. I can only imagine what they do when you login to the phone.

I wonder if ROMs like LineageOS remove this telemetry.

The telemetry mostly comes from Google Play Services, which are optional on LineageOS. I've been using my phone without it and side-loading open source programs - no issues so far and no telemetry collected as far as I can see.

Ah, in that case I wonder if MicroG has the same sort of telemetry, as that's what I've installed in my LOS ROM...

What are the biggest issues for you with removing Play Services?

Wouldn't this remove the ability to use almost all commercial / Play Store apps and leave you with what's available on F-Droid or similar?I

At that point - with 90% of apps gone - I might as well get an old BlackBerry or something and get by with just basic IMap mail, calendar, contacts, and SMS.

I don’t use Android; but Google does have far more privacy options if you pay. You can disable various tracking / mining functionality.

My guess with that is that they’re using Google Analytics for click stream data. Welcome to like 50% of mobile apps out there.

No root necessary - https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard - although LineageOS or some other non-Google OS is a great idea anyway.

Wonder if a VPN adblocker (no root needed) will suffice in blocking the phoning home?

Link without paywall: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-free-is-too-high-a-price-fo...

Blendle link if you want to pay 49 cents: https://blendle.com/i/the-wall-street-journal/when-free-is-t...

Thanks for this, been looking to sign up to Blendle for ages!

what stops a company that charges for it's services from also making even more money by selling your data and showing you ads?

even traditional magazines and newspapers had ads.

Traditional magazines and newspapers were generally primarily ad-supported; paid circulation was important as a signal that the as ads were getting viewed, drive there was no way to measure impressions delivered to actual readers directly; there's less reason for an ad-funded online service to charge users directly, since they don't need the indirect proxy measure of reach.

yeah, but "less reason to" is not "more reason not to"

A paid service has to serve my interests for me to pay for it. A paid tool with ads will not succeed unless it’s absolutely necessary to the user and there’s no way around.

People tolerate Facebook & their ads, dark patterns to get users addicted, etc when it’s free, but very few people would pay for that.

Also, traditional magazines’ ads is something I personally value. It’s a safe way to discover new trends/products that have been somewhat vetted by the magazine (you won’t find any malware or scams on a full-page ad in a magazine, and if you did the reputation of that magazine would be severely damaged) without being stalked and seeing the same product everywhere for months just because you happened to check one out.

what stops a company that charges for it's services from also making even more money by selling your data

Their reputation. If a company develops the reputation for not doing that, then changing their minds will alienate people.

Notably, Apple has begun to develop a reputation for caring about privacy. It fits their hardware-driven business model. It has a nice side effect of creating a moat that would be difficult for ad driven businesses to cross.

Does anyone know how to read this article for free? Ironically relative.

What dollar value do you assign to misinformation that undermined the national discourse around the 2016 U.S. election...

It has been priceless for "both" the "major" parties, that such a baseless falsehood as RussiaRussiaRussia has allowed them to avoid any scrutiny of how their chosen candidates could have been beaten by a reality-TV buffoon. After enough arm-twisting, FB finally allowed that, sure, whatever, Russia bought a couple thousand dollars worth of ads. Thanks Facebook!

Baseless falsehood? I take it you haven’t read the Mueller Report or seen the indictments of Russian Nationals. Willful ignorance or intentional misinformation?

Some people commit crimes and go to jail, including Russian nationals who interfere with our elections. But let's be clear, a few thousand dollars of Facebook ads that read like they were created by high schoolers is not why a clown was elected. That's the lie, not that foreign actors tried to influence our election. Foreign actors trying to influence elections is the standard operating procedure for all the big players in the world.

The danger is that if people keep inflating this imaginary foreign bugaboo as the root cause for their perceived catastrophe, they will ignore the real reasons they lost the next time. Perhaps the second time around can break through their cognitive dissonance, but I fear it will just break sanity.

I'm confident he'll win again and worry there'll be riots in major cities. The front runner for the Democrats, Biden, doesn't even seem to be really campaigning. I think their strategy is "The less people see Biden the more they like him" so he has carefully been timid enough to stay out of the news. And Biden is definitely a back to former status quo candidate.

And I'm worried that if he loses, he won't accept the results of the election, and that many of his most rabid fans will follow him into the abyss. I'm worried that his jokes about staying President betray his actual desires, and that his lack of knowledge and respect for the Constitution and rule of law, or of norms of decency, alongside his narcissism and lack of inhibition, will cause him to do just that. I'm worried that this country has become two countries, and that Republicans would rather stick it to the libs than follow their own oft stated principle s. I worry that the talking heads self interest in stoking controversey and outrage puts ratings before truth, god, and country. I worry that no one wants to find the truth anymore,band that some believe that there is no truth, only power. I worry that each side no longer sees the other as friends, neighbours, allies, or even as Americans, perhaps not even fully human.

People have said the same thing about at least the two most recent previous presidents. There's zero chance of him not stepping down. Even if Trump were the type of person to try that, which he's not, in order for the type of coup you're talking about to work you have to have support of the military. Any attempt to do this would last all of about ten seconds.

I am aware that it is an American tradition to worry about Presidents defying their term limits, declaring national emergencies to seize power, and all that jazz. It's a tradition I approve of, especially given the increasing power of the executive branch, and Congress's weak-kneed approach to reigning that in.

That said, Trump's "jokes" about such things are not ordinary and are deeply inappropriate. Also his attempts to get the military and the police to show personal loyalty to him is also unusual, and deeply inappropriate. Even if, as you say, he couldn't pull it off even if he tried, that doesn't mean it is not setting bad precedent. Norms are much harder to build up than to tear down, and the rule of law as we know it cannot survive without them.

All major indications are that he was prepared to lose and concede the 2016 election. He didn't appear to have written an acceptance speech. He didn't have a cabinet picked out. He is rumored to have had a deal in the works to start his own cable channel, Trump TV. You don't do that stuff if you're planning on committing a coup to overthrow the country after losing an election. I remember the first six months. He was not behaving like a person who seriously thought he'd be running the country, legitimately or otherwise. There is no reasonable concern here. He's a reality TV personality and says a lot of stupid shit. I don't like him a president, but these hair on fire fears and conspiracy theories are baseless.

I'm not talking about 2016, and never have been talking about 2016. but it's pretty clear you are not actually responding to anything I've actually said, so no point in continuuing the conversation. probably no point to begin with, since when it comes to politics people's heads don't stay on straight.

but presidents saying "stupid shit" is not something I take lightly

I understand you're not talking about 2016. But the Trump that was totally ready to concede and not ever even become the President in 2016 is the same Trump running in 2020.

> whatever, Russia bought a couple thousand dollars worth of ads.

The Kremlin internet propaganda project had, at its peak, a budget of more than $1.25 million per month. It was doing a lot more than just buying adverts.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/mueller...

That's really peanuts though. If that was all they spent, then for less than the cost of one fighter jet, they destabilized the most powerful country in the world for three years, so far. That would be the most wildly successful propaganda campaign in history.

That's just known expenditures by the Internet Research Agency, though. For a full accounting, you'd not only need to know if that was all the IRA spent, you'd also need to include, say... how much Russia spent on hacking into the DNC's emails, and into 39 states' election infrastructure[1]; how much value they extracted from the polling data Manafort sent their way[2]; etc.

And even with all costs taken into account, it took a perfect storm of factors outside their control for their actions to actually change the result. I doubt they even expected that outcome themselves.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-13/russian-b...

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/03/mueller...

...perfect storm of factors outside their control...

This is what I was talking about above. Both Ds and Rs ran noxious morons, and they got beat by a different noxious moron. Both Ds and Rs ignored real things that real people care about, like fewer evil wars and more good jobs. Trump had some lip service on those topics, and that was enough.

Oh, also there was the fact that Trump was on every channel of TV news, all day every day for 1.5 years. That probably had something to do with it, and Russians had very little influence over that. Why has there been no great hue and cry about investigating MSNBC's and Fox's editorial and programming decisions? Why, indeed.

It is at least a glowing endorsement of the efficacy of a well-run Facebook properties ad campaign.

Google Adwords has much less ROI in this context.

That article from over a year ago cites allegations, not evidence. Has anyone ITT taken a high school civics class?

I admit that some Dems have ridden too much on Russia as being the cause of their problems, but you are so widely off base to act like what Russia did was only purchase a few advertisements. I’d recommend reading the Mueller report like others have mentioned.

It has been decades since I trusted anyone in the Justice Department, or Mueller specifically. Did you know he testified before Congress that Saddam had WMDs? Did you know that wasn't true? Did Mueller ever come up on perjury charges? Did you know that they send people to prison for drug possession? What kind of evil bastard does that?

I read the damn report. There is a lot of innuendo and a lot of broad "we found" without much specifics but not anything Mueller ever plans to have to defend in court. If any of the "Russian hacking" crap had ever generated a court case, a federal judge would be present to ensure that claims are examined carefully. As it is, it's just a bunch of Crowdstrike/New Knowledge-style handwaving.

Not only that, he's doing nothing by the book and yet everything seems to be going extremely well for almost everyone. Every time both parties say he's crazy for doing something, it's fine. It's really put on the spotlight that either the office of the presidency doesn't matter at all, or all of their conventional wisdom was just wrong. Trade, economy, negotiation with dictators... All of it both parties have panicked about what he's doing and it's all either better than before or at least not worse.

The irony that it's behind a pay wall and I immediately lose interest. I wonder if the WSJ talks about that?

What irony? Either you accept ad supported content or you pay for it.

Problem: why people share links to payed content ?

In my world, payed content = no sharing. It would be great if sites like this would just prevent that. I don't have a problem with payed stuff. I have a problem when people hijack my time by providing a link that turns out to be pay walled, whats the point of that ? No... I am not going to bounce register, does it anybody ?

And probably has Google ad/tracking, and presumably Facebook social links too ...

At least on mobile, Brave is reporting blocking 32 ads and trackers.

You can actually read WSJ content on Blendle, they charge 49 cents for each article. Worth it for most stuff posted here IMO, while other shorter articles are not - just get the one-click refund if you encounter that.

Blendle link for this article: https://blendle.com/i/the-wall-street-journal/when-free-is-t...

Thanks!

Feels good to buy an article on Blendle again. Last I checked I found little interesting and I so want that project to succeed.

They are saying that ‘free’ has consequences- and their content isn’t free. The irony being?

Well, if you are trying to express your opinion to me, forcing me to pay to have access to it, I am not going to hear your opinion expressed, and will find others that will express it.

The newspaper (sites) really need to work together to come up with an alternative payment system that’s straightforward. What would I be worth in this article were I to be served an ad I didn’t click on? 3 cents maybe? I’d be happy to pay that to read quality content, not see ads and have trackers turned off.

Unfortunately most of the paywalls are pushing you towards a sub. I can afford that for 1 or maybe 2 news sources but after that it starts getting hard to maintain.

Link without paywall: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-free-is-too-high-a-price-fo...

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