And so can everyone else.
And podcasters would love to use this distribution system that will net them $0 after risking capital, ONLY if they magically achieve a 100% listen rate in spite of the incredible incentives to have the listen rate be 0%. Otherwise it’ll cost them money.
And for all that hassle and risk, they get a distribution system no better than the free and open one they enjoy now.
Perhaps I’ve misunderstood something, otherwise I don’t think this idea is viable :)
Podcasters get access to the entire data set for every listener and can run clustering and regression to their hearts' content. As you listen to podcasts and perhaps rate them, the cost to target you (i.e. your random ID) goes up because the podcasters have better data to work with and should know better than to send you politics podcasts when all you listen to is vampire erotica.
If you become a listener, then they've acquired a listener and you've acquired a podcast that you like. If you're not interested, then they pay the cost of poor targeting, and you are compensated for the inconvenience. Proper incentives all around!
The net cost to the podcaster doesn't have to be $0 for the service to be worthwhile. It only has to be more effective than AdWords and other venues where they pay to expose themselves.
That seems like the mother of all perverse incentives.
I think Apple should fix or remove their rankings but, please, don't add any more metrics.
The podcast world is currently mostly immune from so much of the clickbaity trash on Youtube (that arguably isn't even YT's fault).
I admit it's very counterintuitive or almost subversive these days to suggest that internet points be kept secret.
Edit: Here's a CGP Grey video where he talks indirectly about how he sees the internet fracturing his (our?) ability to pay attention and focus. https://youtu.be/wf2VxeIm1no
Media popularity rankings are toxic for everyone but distribution middlemen and advertisers. They turn what should be heterogeneous markets for content producers and their audiences in many different niches (geographic area, interests, subcultures, etc), into a global winner-take-all popularity race in a single market (owned by the distribution middlemen, like iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, etc). The kind of market where every seller is ranked by a single metric and only the top few are rewarded makes sense for things like professional sports, but very little else.
YouTube and and other social media would still get advertising and such without public metrics since you could give private access to them when trying to make deals.
So overall I don’t see how either groups of people mentioned are benefitting much from HN showing metrics.
Interesting point. I'm not sure if you already know this, but Hacker News used to display points for each comment previously. This was turned off in...I dunno, early 2011?
I don't think it's harmed user activity on the site at all!
I've used uBlock Origin to block the score-related elements in Reddit as well as my own comment scores here. I don't think I pay much attention to the numbers in YouTube etc but will do so there too if I notice I'm checking them
www.reddit.com##.score-hidden, .score
news.ycombinator.com##.scoreAny ideas? Assume that someone decided to harness one of the many click-farms to do automated podcast subscriptions?
I suppose it's also possible that Apple did an ill-advised algorithm change or something that changed the weights very heavily, and the spammers who had been quietly doing their thing for months suddenly all got promoted.
I guess I care more about a subject than popularity.