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0 pointstombert2mo ago0 comments

Do we need more than 1% conversion though? As long as the company is sustainable then that's sufficient to justify the company's existence. I think it says more about a lot of these services in that they're so shitty that they people will only use them if they're "free"; if Google or Facebook or Instagram or TikTok aren't good enough services to justify people paying for it, then maybe they shouldn't exist?

You can't use Kagi or Nebula without paying, so I don't really see how they're suffering from the free riders you keep insisting are some horrible epidemic. Almost by definition, if you're using Kagi or Nebula, you're already a conversion...are you saying a 1% conversion from advertising?

I have a collection of four hundred blu-rays and thousands of CDs. I pay for Netflix and Hulu and Amazon Prime, I pay for YouTube Premium and YouTube Music, and I don't use an ad blocker. I don't know if that falls into your criteria of "someone who can discuss this honestly", and of course I don't really have a means of "proving" this to you, but if you can assume I'm being truthful I don't think I'm speaking out of my ass here.

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WarmWash2mo ago· 1 in thread

Then accept the equilibrium of Google being the god of the internet.

If people refuse to pay, refuse to view ads, and are happy to let the suckers like you (and me) carry the cost, then no one should be complaining about the impenetrable giants who reign over us. The internet can reap what it sowed. I'm burning 3GB a month loading ads on my phone so others can view ad free? Maybe I should petition the IRS to let me write it off as a charitable donation.

The story of Vid.me is excellent here, because they were actually on track to dethrone youtube. The hype was real and they genuinely were getting positive traction. Did youtube fight back? Did google sound the alarm? Was there any effort to keep creators on yt? No, no, and no. Why?

Because Google knew Vid.me would run out of runway, and that at heart, the users were just there for the free lunch. Vid.me went bankrupt and never made even a dollar from their "fans".

tombertOP2mo ago

But there are companies that charge money and manage to be successful, as I stated.

Even before the internet most businesses failed. Sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for dumb reasons. Before people expected everything to be free. Pointing to a company that you liked failing doesn't really prove anything; there's always a billion variables that can contribute to corporate failures and saying "LOL PEOPLE WON'T PAY FOR THINGS AD BLOCK BAD I HAVE TO PAY BANDWIDTH" doesn't really say anything.

Just because you can find some companies that charged money and failed doesn't change my point at all. Netflix has become successful enough to be in the running to buy Warner Bros. Netflix is an internet-first company that doesn't do anything for free and yet it's getting to a point where it's able to buy a very large legacy media company. It has been competing with free YouTube content and ThePirateBay.

I don't see at all how this proves that I need to "accept the equilibrium of Google".

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