Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ilovecaching 2663 days ago
Honestly this is just political blame shifting, virtue signaling, and more empty promises of handouts in the face of California's disastrous finances. California takes more taxes than practically any other state to fund failed infrastructure projects, all the while allowing sky high rents in the SF, LA, and SD areas because the government is locked down by rich landlords protecting their investments. Not to mention the price hikes on toll roads, county sales taxes, and general cost of living while homelessness is still rampant. Our greatest achievement is still an underwater tunnel built in the 70s. I want to see Gavin do something to change California first.

Users are already getting value for their data - the product showing the ads. People have a choice in whether they want to use gmail and get a free best-in-class email client, backend storage, and worldwide access to their email. The trade is that they're participating in an ad platform that is required to build this infrastructure that is on a never before seen in the history of humanity scale. Of course Americans and Europeans think it's totally fine to charge a five to ten bucks a month for a service like that, even when it would mean forcing the growing lower classes, second and third world countries, and the tech illiterate to use unsafe and frankly dangerous alternatives. Ads are a communal investment that allows us to provide services to people who can't afford those services.
2 comments
dalbasal 2663 days ago
For the sake of discussion, lets focus on the idea itself, whatever the motiviations of the politician who's saying it.

>> Users are already getting value for their data - the product showing the ads. People have a choice in whether they want to use gmail and get a free best-in-class email client, backend storage, and worldwide access to their email. The trade is that they're participating in an ad platform that

FB are currently earning $50b pa from advertising, which is largely premised on FB's data collection on and off the platform. What users get is, by-and-large, very similar to what they were getting in 2012, when FB was making $5bn. That 10X increase in revenue (and 10X increase in FB staff/cost) hasn't gone towards making more/better product. It has gone towards making better (often more creepy) ad-tech.

At least with television there is competition, and that means ad revenue has to go towards making more/better programming.

SAAS has negligible marginal cost and often strong network effects. The value of an ad-platform and many uses of data (especially ad-targetting) also scales exponentially. This is leading to bad, monopolistic outcomes.

link
ilovecaching 2663 days ago
That's an incredible selective way to look at it. Google search has almost no competition. Social media has Snapchat, Twitter, TikTok, and there's really not a huge bar to entry. New social media apps rise all the time. It's also your opinion that their product hasn't improved over time, and your conjecture that that's where the money is going.

Also in television there is much less competition. The TelCos are the worst monopolies out there. Getting a competitive cable or ISP landscape is a laughable idea in the US.

link
jgust 2663 days ago
> really not a huge bar to entry

Critical mass is a huge bar to entry.

link
KorematsuFred 2663 days ago
Fully agreed. This is no more in ideas space vs a rogue single party communist state engaging in policy wanking and pandering to the worst elements in society while pretending to be helping the poor. This is a state where politicians work actively to protect the interests of richest rich while screwing up actually productive people.

I hope Google, Facebook and others will develop a diversification strategy and move out of this shithole.

link