We should also normalize paying for content at the same time then.
There are many such services where I'm from. And the feeling when using them is refreshing. You're not looking for an ulterior motive to be misinformed. They're responsive as they don't load a 10 MiB JavaScript blob to track your interactions "for marketing".
As an example, consider a service that gives you nutritional information of food. https://www.matvaretabellen.no/en/
The software solution and hosting is not remotely as expensive as the lab work needed to gather the nutritional information.
If this was made by a private company, it would be a subscription service, without a doubt. You'd find certain brands but not others because of deals under the table. It would have user profiles for collecting and selling data, not to mention integration with fitness and weight loss services. You might also wonder if part of the data is incorrect because of all that darn expensive lab analysis. Heck, maybe some CTO figured they could "predict" this information with an LLM.
Here, it is covered by taxes, benefit all, full page load in about 0.2 seconds (or 0.5 seconds for nutritional value). This is how the internet could be.
What incentive does that mechanism have to spur innovation for government-run Facebook? Does the government fund two Facebooks and scale funding based on market share? Or, like what virtually always happens in government, does it metastasize, realize it's actual "customer" isn't its "users" but is actually the government itself, and act accordingly to protect and grow its own budget?
Everything about a subscription model is better. If it sucks, don't pay for it, and if no one thinks its a worthwhile bargain then they run out of money and it dies. Efficient. If people do like it, then great.
> Steal from everyone (taxation) [...] give the money to government-run Facebook, and everything will be great because Government
Not touching this. As an exercise, take it upon yourself to figure out how much it cost per meter (or, I assume more familiar to you -- football field) for the road you last used, and where that money came from.
> government-run Facebook?
Yes. But, it depends what you think Facebook is, which I'm assuming isn't what Meta does with Facebook. They are in the business of collecting, profiling, and selling to data brokers, and influence to foreign countries or private interests. All of this is of negative value to both end user and society. In a world with a "government run Facebook", it wouldn't exist.
So what is the service Facebook actually provides then? A way to manage communities and events. A way to find, connect, and communicate with others. And it would absolutely be a good case for something that could easily surpass the value of services provided by "facebook", if done right, without incentive beyond making good services.
Not sure if you've noticed or paid much attention. None of the most important services do product development guided by <improving the service>. Google wouldn't have replaced Play Music. Your search result might be immediately useful but that would make you move on. I'd also wager that your YouTube client doesn't automatically skip the sponsor segments.
I don’t have Facebook or use any social media (except LinkedIn) and yet I still plan events, connect, and communicate with others. I have not touched a mainstream social media site since probably 2013.
We don't need Facebook, and we especially don’t need to spend a bunch of money on a poorly run government Facebook either.
Out of curiosity, what brings you here? Also, what is your favorite AI model?
I use Claude but don’t have too strong of an opinion on any specific model provider.
The OP was responding to "government run Facebook?" and the premise is "we need Facebook-style technology to do XYZ things like plan events" but for-profit Facebook fills that need with these negative repercussions: "collecting, profiling, and selling to data brokers, and influence to foreign countries or private interests." and then argues that it follows that a government run Facebook should exist to handle the things that the OP is asserting are necessary without any of the identified downside.
The flaw in the premise is that you need Facebook or a government fun Facebook to do any of the things the OP suggested. You don't. And I'd argue not only should we not have a government fun Facebook, we shouldn't have Facebook or other social media to begin with.
I'm sure the OP is going to come in now and say that wasn't their premise. I'm simply responding to the words that they wrote. No matter how it is framed or how the goalposts are moved, you simply do not need Facebook nor do you need a government run Facebook.
It does, in precisely the way I described. Your comment was not engaging with the point they brought up.
> The flaw in the premise is that you need Facebook or a government fun Facebook to do any of the things the OP suggested.
This is not in their premise. Nobody "needs" it for those things, I will grant and have granted. Regardless, some still "use" it for those things. OP never said people can't replace it with other means to do what Facebook currently does for them, just that they apparently don't want to, as revealed by their use of Facebook for the doings in question. If you still think that's wrong, please point me to the passage in their comment which contradicts it, because I am failing to find it.
> I'm sure the OP is going to come in now and say that wasn't their premise.
Funny. I now wonder if I'm going to be dismissed as a sock puppet.
Ok that's incorrect because I did engage with the point they brought up in that comment, and then even quoted it specifically.
> This is not in their premise. Nobody "needs" it for those things, I will grant and have granted. Regardless, some still "use" it for those things. OP never said people can't replace it with other means to do what Facebook currently does for them, just that they apparently don't want to, as revealed by their use of Facebook for the doings in question. If you still think that's wrong, please point me to the passage in their comment which contradicts it, because I am failing to find it.
If that was their premise I would just reject it off-hand as the equivalent of just saying stuff. People use Facebook. Cows moo. Sometimes it rains on Tuesday. Who cares?
The point isn't whether or not people use or need Facebook, what was in question and being discussed was the negative aspects and whether some other version of a Facebook could be swapped in to have the "good" parts of Facebook without the "bad".
For example:
> government-run Facebook?
> Yes. But, it depends what you think Facebook is, which I'm assuming isn't what Meta does with Facebook. They are in the business of collecting, profiling, and selling to data brokers, and influence to foreign countries or private interests. All of this is of negative value to both end user and society. In a world with a "government run Facebook", it wouldn't exist.
My point is I disagree with the need to solve this problem by creating what will inevitably by giant software conflagrations that ultimately, in my view, do not serve any real purpose because not only does the government version serve no purpose, the private market version doesn't either.
If you want to actually challenge my point instead of engaging in "nuh uh that wasn't the premise" you could just say well other people think they need it or really want it and you're just stating an opinion, or something along those lines.
If you really want to play this whole "logical fallacy" game, then I can start demanding sources and specific definitions of words used too and you can spend hundreds of characters defining specific terms so that your own discussion points aren't themselves some variation of a "logical fallacy".
Folks who toss those things around usually don't know how to use them correctly (as we see here with you and others) or they hide behind them when their various points are met with challenges they can't overcome.
“Provide incentive programs and reward those that take on such initiatives.”
We have that too, we call it capitalism. It’s not very unique, but we heavily market it under the “land of opportunity” moniker. Do a thing of value and your reward is the lion’s share of that value. “You get what you’re given” seems to make some countries happy, but I’m sure you can understand the appeal of “you get what you earn”, even if neither of them matches the brochure. The scholars can debate the pros and cons of it, and where it goes wrong, but you’re talking about investment reward structures like it’s a fresh concept coming out of Scandinavia.
On that note, let’s set aside the endless conversation around “government Facebook” and talk foundational: Size, diversity, and population. It’s funny when I see comments from micro->small nation states with relatively homogeneous citizens throwing up their hands like “Everyone should just agree on what to have for dinner, like we do.” Oh I’m sure you’re aware that ‘America be big’, maybe even visited New York and were impressed by all those not-tall non-blonde people waking around, but perhaps without fully appreciating that it alone has a 50% higher population than your whole country. Something more your speed would be the Atlanta metro area, which still has a ~10% higher population. Getting everyone to happily chip in a few bucks on a half pepperoni/vegetarian pizza (or, I assume more familiar to you — “Grøt med smør eller rørte bær”) is a lot easier when everyone can be fed by that pizza.
But that leads to the larger point: we don’t have as much of a problem getting our Norway sized cities to provide various communal welfare services to the local residents, the problem is in scaling that up to 65 Norways.
Or did you have a different menu in mind?
[1] I don't like this talk, I'm just using it as an example.
The money just goes into private hands instead. Is that really the better option here? Innovation isn't necessary if you have a de facto monopoly - and frankly, Facebook is a good example; nothing it has done in 10 years was actually an improvement to the service or humanity.
It would be alright to socialize the good parts and get rid of the bad ones.
For a concrete example: LINE (most widely-used messaging app in Japan) has paid subscriptions, and even the highest tier subscription doesn't reduce ads. Other services (e.g. YouTube Premium) reduce ads, but do not eliminate them, no matter how much you pay.
Hmm curious to know where you live that you still get Youtube-supplied ads with YT Premium?
Because "ad-free" is literally the headline feature.
Unless you're talking about in-video ads and sponsorships added in by the video creators themselves, and then that's not something in YT's control (although they provide the "skip commonly skipped sections" feature in Premium that helps with this).
they can require ad and sponsor-free copies of videos to be uploaded in order to get YT premium revenue.
they control the platform. that they choose not to make the premium experience ad free is up to them
Also why would YT get involved in the content of videos themselves, beyond legal moderation requirements?
That's a slippery slope in itself, and it would just lead to a cat-and-mouse game where creators try to incorporate sponsorships in less obvious/visible ways, which is a net bad thing for the audience.
Now at least creators are required to disclose when their videos contain sponsored segments or paid advertisements. What you propose would take away that accountability.
As it stands, you can see when a video includes ads, and you can choose to not watch it. That's your choice.
At times I've had Spotify, Netflix and Mubi subscriptions. As a UK-resident with a TV, I pay for the BBC.
I feel I more than adequately contribute to cultural production.
In some ways, the current situation suits me fine. I take the free stuff where I'm technically capable. I'll block the ads, pirate to my hearts content, use yt-dlp, BPC, userscripts.
I'm not not paying for stuff, but I've enough financial pressures already, thank you very much. I don't see why I should send all my money to (mostly) US corporations, who've farmed and resold user-generated content.
That’s why movies and AAA games can clear a billion dollars, but the internet is still dependent on people failing to install ad blockers.
And yet somehow I still get 30 minutes of ads before a watching a goddamn movie in a cinema.
> Decades of ad propaganda have tricked people into seeing them as something 'normal'.
also wait, we're talking about a US company, should we be paying a US company, for "content"? Is all "content" produced by these US megacorps, I don't think so, they're purely extractive
what are you gonna do, make more Marvel movies? lol
We are already paying for the externalities from ad tech. We’ve got entire worlds of predatory information behavior and near zero defenses for humans.
If you are on HN, you hopefully know enough to keep yourself clean and safe, but the rest of humanity is essentially getting mugged, defrauded and addicted 24/7.
We are already paying too much for all the services with subscription. Like Spotify, Netflix and others...
[0] https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/416547/youtub...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46322556, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433
Amazon does the same with product ads.
That's more like "paying to not see ads" than "paying for content".
Meanwhile spotify also has at least two autogenerated playlists of the songs you have chosen to play more than a few times. Literally "Here's the songs you recently took an interest in", and they do not fill your front page with that autogenerated playlist!
Because that copy they are shoving in your face is not Informing you of useful Features or Inviting you to try something we made, but is instead managed by the marketing department.
Their incentives would be aligned to users, not advertisers.
The ideological changes alone would be like living in a different world entirely.
Heck, maybe micropayments would become viable at that point.
However they do not stop tracking you.
I just wish I had the option they have in the Netherlands. Where you can set the "Following" tab as the primary and it doesn't constanly revert back.
A judge decreed that that must be done for users in the Netherlands but it's not available anywhere else.
And I'd encourage other people who can afford to, to do the same.
I'm not sure how scalable my approach is within the status quo, though - I've never seen a subscribers-only article go viral on social media, and almost all of my subscriptions began with me enjoying a generous free tier. And I've tried a number of micropayment systems but none of them seem poised to take off for various reasons.
[1] I don't pay for facebook, because fuck 'em
I will add though, that the freemium model does not necessarily have to cease existing. Some platform for written articles can have articles available at no cost, and then put a paywall in front of other articles. I don't see the problem with that. It will be a careful balancing act of content creators, how much is in the freemium section, so that they attract a sufficient number of readers/fans/supporters.
What more do you want??
If someday Google puts Youtube behind a hard paywall, no more "free with ads," I'd pay for it. I already pay for Nebula. But if I can get around the ads with uBlock, why wouldn't I? Just on principle? Because it's not fair that their business model doesn't make the revenue they want?
(Disclosure: my employer owns an ad network. Opinions my own.)