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Comment by clord | Hacker News Reader

It might help prevent crap-tastic apps on the store because it changes the incentive structure. If the subscription is doled out in proportion to time spent in-app, the incentive on developers would be to maximize engagement time, which might be a good thing for users. For paid apps such a scheme would be a problem since it would likely reduce income, but as a way to get money to fund free apps, not a bad idea actually.

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> If the subscription is doled out in proportion to time spent in-app

And think of all the cool new laborious, overcomplicated, and time-consuming UI designs we could look forward to!

Great just more apps for me to not use... It's not like people won't try to make nicer, simpler interfaces like they already do.

> If the subscription is doled out in proportion to time spent in-app

Then what stops shady slot game app developer from keeping his app running in the background 24/7 and trashing the commons (or private garden, I guess)? Technical solutions can probably go a decent amount of the way, but there will always be a work-around...

Time spent in an app is certainly not the best measure of value. Ideally, a user could be given some flexibility to 'upvote' subscription payment allocation to apps that have the most value to them.

How do you measure time spent "in-app"? Does the app have to be in the foreground or merely running in the background? If it has to be in the foreground then how does that help apps that mainly run in the background such as RunKeeper? If it's allowed to run in the background and still get credit then won't that create an incentive for battery-draining crap that users struggle to shut down?

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