[toss1]

>>Detecting scammy behaviour could be a leading indicator of an inflection point in a market or company where its growth phase is behind it.

Agree this would seem like a good indicator.

The counterpoint is entire VC-backed industries that unnecessarily use scammy biz models from the start, e.g., requiring everything to be an internet-based "service", exfiltrating data and requiring subscription funding when it obviously is not required. Examples: robot vacuums, remotely-settable thermostats [0], security cameras [0], etc...

[0] No I don't need the full "service", at most I need a way to keep track of the external IP address of the device. If you want to offer the extra "service", fine, but it needs to be an add-on, not an obligatory dependency and cost.

[motohagiography]

This could be co-opted as evidence for the theory as well, where all these products that are converting to services models are economic "inferior goods," where you switch away from them when you can afford something better. Month-to-month subscriptions are what you have when the product isn't good enough to buy an annual one, or just buy it outright.

The companies position themselves that way because they want to take advantage of peoples indifference to small subscriptions - because they know their products are objectively lame.

[toss1]

>>because they want to take advantage of peoples indifference to small subscriptions

Hmmm. I may be odd, but I and everyone I know have a very high resistance to subscriptions, even small ones, because they are maintenance and just a general budget leak. My impression of the reason that companies want subscriptions is that they tend to extract much more revenue from the customer; of course they don't get it all up front, but recurring revenue streams and especially that continue even when the product provides no value (e.g., the customer forgets about the ongoing charges), can be ridiculously profitable.