Free is NOT the problem. Free is the “business model” of the internet. Just because some people want to monetize it doesn’t mean we need to give up and just let them do what they want. Selling ads is not the purpose of the internet. Content created to sell ads is most of the time garbage. No chicken, no egg no puzzle to resolve.
Well, not really - free is maximizing value creation, not value capture. Chris Anderson explained all this: "the world of free exists mostly to acquire these valuable assets [attention, reputation, etc] for the sake of a business model to be identified later"
It just so happens they already have a great business model, but they didn't when they released their search engine. They didn't make their search engine free to "maximize their profits"
Plenty of services were free prior to commercialization of the web because they generated nom-monetary value (community, knowledge, etc.). Plenty of creators and artists also make money directly via donations (Patreon, etc.). I'm not sure we need the existing ad model for either free content or to make money on the internet.
I would argue that the current model is more friendly to attention grabbing content (clickbait, etc) because advertising has the limitation that all views are worth the same value. In a pay-as-you-go Internet, users can whitelist high quality content sources as being okay to charge 10x or 100x what you'd typical accept to view a webpage. This would incentive content creators to build a brand and reputation that makes users comfortable putting them on the 'high quality' list, so that their content can see a massive revenue multiple relative to the number of eyeballs.
opinion: The "free" model of services arose because there was no way to monetize services, and micropayments still don't exist decades later.
So, entrepreneurs plucked the low-hanging fruit of advertising, robbing old media. Advertising depends on large numbers (or targeting) so the "network effect" drove gigantic sites where you deal with vastly more than Dunbar's Number (150), which is the maximum number of relationships we can maintain at once. [1]
Along with this, came the idea of "targeted" ads, so there's a double whammy. You're exposed to more people than you can relate to, and being surveilled as well.
Then news feeds (who asked for news feeds?) led to echo chambers and psychological engagement tricks.
Three strikes.
"But that's the price of free", you say.
However, the internet is not free. Everyone pays to access it, and unlike a cable provider, you get zero "premium" content for the often outrageous prices that ISP's charge. Libraries? Governments pay for libraries and you pay governments.
Further, the effects above have turned the "network of networks" model of the internet inside out, so it's more like the old "There are Three TV networks" model than a lot of friendly and truly social networks.
And like cable, which was touted to be "ad-free", you got ads anyway, as do many sites that you pay good money to visit. Ad money is addictive, and we the users, get all the side effects.
I attribute the above to the enshittification of computers long ago, being overly complex, shipped with unstable software rushed out the door to compete in "feature wars" (This has been a big deal since the 80's) and beyond the average person's ability to maintain. Hence, more centralization via giant websites (which also crash and burn, but someone else gets to fix it)
Now that bots and AI are flooding the internet (and online bookstores) with the power of a million monkeys each with a supercomputer, a turning point has been reached. And I'll defer to other posts which quote people in the know who say that it's time to turn this mess around. How? Well, that's up to you and me, with the goal of quality of life for ourselves and billions of others ahead of fast bucks.
There were two articles posted here, and my replies.
We Need to re-wild the internet [2]
Why do negative topics dominate social media sites, even here? [3]
Wild is good as long as it's not wild as in battlefield. It's not like you get diverse opinions; no matter what you post, you get warring factions, vulgar insults, and sometimes, death threats. And bots.
Anil Dash argues [5] that things can be better in not so wide-open communities.
And then there’s someone like Darius Kazemi, a computer programmer and community organizer who has been patiently toiling away building tools that let others build healthy, constructive, human-scale online communities — the sort that are full of acts of kindness and genuine connection, instead of incessant fights about hate speech. There’s been a huge uptick in interest in Darius’ work as networks like Twitter have fallen apart, and a new generation discovers the joys of an internet that’s as intimate and connected as a friendly neighborhood. And this hearkens back to that surprising, and delightful, discovery that often underpinned the internet of a generation ago — sometimes the entire platform you were using to talk to others was just being run by one, passionate person. We’re seeing the biggest return to that human-run, personal-scale web that we’ve witnessed since the turn of the millennium, with enough momentum that it’s likely that 2024 is the first year since then that many people have the experience of making a new connection or seeing something go viral on a platform that’s being run by a regular person instead of a commercial entity. It’s going to make a lot of new things possible.
I have had ideas for a different internet -- a network of networks. Since Stewart Brand and Ted Nelson and Kevin Kelly, technology was meant to empower and liberate people. Only a handful actually do, as in Wikipedia. People have enormous computing power in their computers and mobile devices. It often just liberates cash from their pockets.
Time to reinvent. I'll share ideas later.
No need for the crap: [6]
Well, things changed a little bit in tech of late. Often, the power shifts in the tech world because of a dramatic new invention that solves an old problem a whole lot better. But in the current era, when most of what's getting funded and hyped up are just various attempts to undermine workers and control consumers, we're instead seeing lots of major players lose power because their signature offerings have gotten so much worse. Search engines are becoming far more useless as they attempt to chase AI hype and shoehorn in less reliable results, even as their legitimate search results get cluttered up with AI-generated crap. The most culturally influential social network has had its cultural relevance destroyed by its billionaire man-child owner's tantrum-based managemenet style. And the major mobile phone platforms overplayed their hand so badly in exerting power over their app ecosystems that regulators around the globe have responded by prying open these heretofore-closed markets.
Time for a network of networks, not a network of 4 or 5 castles surrounded by serfs.
A Psychologist Explains Four Reasons the Internet Feels So Broken [4]
Short:
Number one is that negativity drives engagement. Number two, extremism drives engagement online. Number three, out-group animosity drives engagement online. And number four, moral, emotional language drives engagement online.
Negativity "clicks", for mostly "old brain" reasons. You say things anonymously that you would never say real person to real person. Social media are a (mostly) no-consequence wide-open "mud" sling.
Anil Dash argues [5] that things can be better in not so wide-open communities.
While I applaud the effort to come up with new business models for the internet because of my distaste for advertising, this still misses the crucial detail.
Virtually of the free "content" out there is only ever consumed because it is free. It is fast food. It is like watching garbage on television. It's an easy choice between getting no free "content" and paying anything whatsoever for it.
The author assumes that some "content" is valuable. This is probably true. (As an aside, I would say that if you're labeling it "content", it probably isn't valuable.). That value needs to be demonstrated somehow and then affirmatively compensated by the consumer. It's on the producer to figure out how to make this happen. But just hoping that people will pay for the privilege of browsing your "content" belies the reality that the "content" probably isn't all that valuable.
The US business model has established "free" for services on the net, paid for by others using behavioral data for advertising. That has its advantages (access for all, no matter the socioeconomic background!) but no "paid for by others" scheme that is less intrusive has popped up yet and "free" is very hard to compete with.
There's also less of a culture of "pour billions into tons of startups and see what sticks", which is a market distortion of its own. That aspect is drying up in the US though, thankfully.
A tiny nitpick: nothing is free, the internet users just pay with a different currency: their data and attention. Both of these things are much more valuable than most internet users think.
As far as a non-commercial internet goes... well, we can always hope. We just have to wrangle the means of content production and control (heh, heh, see what I did there?). The resources are there to do that and have a free (both as in beer and in freedom) and high-quality internet, what we are missing is... attention of the masses, the most expensive thing.
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