This makes the rest moot, but I will still list why I don’t think it’s like you say at least in case of social media.

If social media was paid only (like any actual product or service intended to benefit the customer) and users were choosing between paying different amounts rather than paying vs. not paying, it would kill the network effect outright; platforms would have to struggle to keep users, and to that end would start implementing features users want and need (rather than exploiting their emotional state and employing dark patterns[0] to boost ad impressions).

The interest of a service provider is aligned with the interest of the customer. The incentive to do bad unethical things to the user may exist either way, but it is when the user is not the customer that it becomes a natural course of things. It is still possible to “double-dip”[1], but the difference between users being customers and users not being customers is that in the former you can be an honest service provider and sustain yourself by doing things in the benefit of the user.

[0] For example, have you noticed how Instagram’s GUI is carefully designed to require you to tap two times, with a teeny tiny chevron as the only indicator, every time you open the app to switch to the timeline of people you actually follow, rather than whatever the algorithm suggests (and how carelessly swiping photo carousel left makes you exist that carousel, and lose the scroll position)?

[1] Additionally, note that the examples you named (cars, IoT, OS[2]) make a lot of money from a single purchase and/or are fairly inflexible to switch away from, compared to social media where interoperability is pretty much solved with open standards.

[2] What is a paid-only streaming service that “dips” into advertisement in some unethical way?

So now every social network charges $0.01 per month and makes all the rest of their revenue through advertising.

Would you set the minimum price for every service and outlaw advertising entirely?

For example,

1) disallow double-sided marketplace where primary users are monetised to a third party, or

2) require open API and interoperability, allowing users to switch providers easily, mobile phone style.

No. You’re not going to regulate out human behavior or scammers or MBA’s looking for every avenue to maximize profit.

Make a better system.

Really strong record there, especially internationally.

Make a better system.

Technically, it doesn't logically follow that paying means you aren't the product.

Samsung isn't refunding any of their $3k fridges that now have mandatory ads

If you purchase a product that doesn't have ads and then they introduce ads - that is a huge change in the value proposition of the product.

It is, but one that is already calculated at time of purchase. You'd pay a lot more if there were strict guarantees that it would never display ads.

The Belarus tractor company learned that lesson. Once upon a time they tried to infiltrate western agriculture with, under the backing of the USSR, heavily subsidized products offered on the cheap. But farmers saw through the thin veneer and realized that they wouldn't be able to get parts for the machines down the road. As such, the much cheaper price wasn't a winner. Farmers were willing to pay significantly more to American companies, knowing that they would provide not just on day one but also long into the future. The economic lesson learned was that the marketplace doesn't value just initial purchase price, but the full value proposition over its entire lifetime.

Many people are willing to gamble, of course, especially for "disposable" things.

It is unrealistic, of course, because it is a textbook case of information asymmetry (the enemy of the market)—only a vanishingly small number of people can adequately assess the pricing, having to know enough about hardware and all the various forces that could bring it down, like potential upcoming lineup changes or inventory overflow.

The right move is to fight information asymmetry. Many developed countries, including the US, already do it in countless cases. A mild way could be requiring to disclose things like this in addition to the ToS; a more thorough way could be simply banning this business model.

Saying it's your (the consumers) fault because you didn't read the crystal ball for what was coming in the future.

The price a product is offered at is the price for the product at that time, you don't get to say well I sold it for $10 but it's worth $20 so I'll just sell your data until I recoup that $10 I "lost".

Exactly. The necessary hardware to enable the tracking was installed at the time of purchase. It is not like 10 years later someone dreamed up the idea and decided to stealthy in the night start bolting on new components to every vehicle they could find. It was a feature that was there at the time of purchase and the sale was priced accordingly.

I mean it's a viewpoint, it's a certifiably bonkers one but of all the viewpoints it definitely is one.

> “But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”

>“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”

But I know you will say that the legal system doesn't act in good faith, so... I guess you're screwed. Such is the pitfall of living under a dictatorship.

Which is why I'm not providing what you seek. Production goes to he who is paying, and in this case I am the one doing the paying. Thus, you know the content is written for me and me alone.

> What are we supposed to do about the fact that you are not arguing in good faith?

A rational actor acting in good faith would start talking terms to see the sale go through, but as you are also here in bad faith we can continue to write only for respective selves. Nobody was expecting anything else anyway. I don't imagine anyone has ever paid someone else to write a comment on HN and that isn't about to change today.

That's like the people who claim only idiots live in HOAs but neglect the fact that, in some markets, nearly all real estate worth living in is covered by an HOA of some sort so your alternative isn't "buy a different house" it's "live in an apartment forever"

The world is full of custom car builders. Buying a something like the F-150, but without the undesirable computing components, is quite practical and very possible.

It'll be expensive, which I expect is what you were really trying to say when you pretend there is no such thing for sale, but you're just returning us to the heart of discussion: The F-150 is cheap, comparatively, because it has already priced in the tracking subsidy. You're accepting of those undesirable terms because the lower price makes it compelling enough to do so.

This is like telling someone who doesn't like that they have to wait in traffic they should just take a helicopter to work everyday. Yes, it's technically an option for some people, but for the vast majority it's not.

Same goes for roads. You most definitely can build roads that don't have traffic, but only the rich will be able to afford to use them. Traffic is what enables those of lesser means to also participate.

It's a pretty good tradeoff for those who are poor. And the rich can buy whatever they want anyway.

Mind to help me out a bit and point me at a few companies doing that? Around Kentucky if you don't mind since that's where I am.

It won't come cheap like an F-150, but nobody can expect it to be cheap when the value proposition is much higher.

Must be nice to have the luxury of being able to do nothing. Ford doesn’t have that luxury, though. It has to answer to angry shareholders if it lets a lucrative customer slip through.

Call them. Talk to a real person.

Fraudulent terms of service are not above the law, nor are they above basic expectations in society of fair dealing. You can try to litigate this any which way you choose, based on the language contained in the contract/TOS, and it fundamentally does not matter. At some point, something has to give and it ends with burning down buildings and building guillotines. History is full of abundant lessons about the supremacy of social mores and standards that suborn the law, and the supremacy of the law over the specific parties of any given contract.

Certainly not the appliance salesman, they don't know samsung's plans. And good luck calling samsung and asking for the "future plans" department. This is such a dishonest take.

If they aren't willing to stand buy what they are selling, why would you want to buy it from them in the first place? That's what we call a scam.

Who exactly was I supposed to ask that? The check out cashier at the store? The CTO of the company that manufactures it? Who even knows the answer to that question, and how are millions of consumers supposed to find that out and contact them directly, and why are they permitted to reveal proprietary plans if they even know?

Your arguments are delusionally detached from reality.

Normally F-150s, and fridges for that matter, are sold not by cashiers, but salesmen. I suppose there isn't any meaningful difference in the end — except, unlike a cashier, salesmen are named as such because there is greater expectation of them being intimately familiar with the product so that they can answer such questions.

If they can't, that's a pretty big red flag. Why would you conduct business with someone who has proven to be shady (or at least incompetent)?

I do not use much social media platforms, while I try to stay social, like posting one picture a month and sending a message here and there, watching a cat video sometimes, etc. I think social networks are much more similar to drugs - you can try to regulate to prevent people hurting themselves, but people will find a way if they can't refrain themselves.

Scams existed before social networks, and maybe is a bit easier using them, but I do not feel it is a fundamental shift. Along the ages people were taught/encouraged "to believe (without checking)" into a multitude of subjects (state, church, horoscope, etc.), now seems a bit hypocritical to be amazed that they do just that.

I don't think that's actually true for WhatsApp in a lot of countries - it's the default communication for many, to the point I'm not sure I could get parcel deliveries reliably here in Spain if I didn't have WhatsApp.

Ditto for communicating with the entire generations who moved onto Facebook after we all abandoned it. I could delete Facebook entirely, but then I'd spend every family gathering hearing the chorus "why aren't you on Facebook? Your cousins are all on Facebook. They all know the family drama" (instead I keep Facebook off the homescreen of my phone, and check it about once a month).

For this to work for the likes of Meta, it would mean elevating Meta’s services to some sort of country-wide public utility, which I’m sure would create probably an even stronger moat than network effects, hindering any competiton.

However, is there such a constraint in case of social media? There are mechanisms and open standards that could allow interoperability between providers who implement them. It seems that it should be possible to leave it up to market forces and competition, but for that we have to have competition and be able to vote with our wallets.

Nebula is youtube that works for you. But the conversion rate from youtube-ad-viewer to nebula-subscription-payer is <1%.

Nebula would be as good if I consistently wanted to watch a particular creator - say, if I consistently listened to LegalEagle on my train ride to work - but I don't. And the channels that are good enough to consistently watch do not upload regularly enough to be spotted on a chronological feed and I'm sure that's no accident. Nor, I suspect, do they upload regularly enough to be eligible for a partnership with Nebula.

I have a subscription to Nebula because I want to support them and the idea and their future competitors other than YouTube, but I don't actually use it.

My issue is that in presence of one large player who does it for free competition is already impossible: $2 is twice as much more than $1, but $1 is infinity/NaN times more than $0. It’s one of the many problems with the fact that it is legally allowed.

Nebula is good in that it properly allows me to pay the people who's content and reporting and art I like and support them without giving the toxic sludge of Youtube a dime.

It also allows them to focus on doing their job: Making the good videos I want and that they want to make, rather than play some absurd algorithm games.

Floatplane is similarly better aligned with what artists and creators want to do. The guy from DankPods is much happier on that platform than something like Twitch which gave him constant problems.

The GunTubers and "Current military events but from former soldiers who act like they know what they are talking about in reference to geopolitics" have created their own platform and I hope that succeeds too. I do not agree with a lot of the politics from some of these people (and believe some others are liars) but diversity is good.

Armchair Historian also created their own platform. That might not have panned out though, they had financial troubles that led to them abandoning another project.

IMO, the best platform is Patreon linking to a bunch of MP4s on S3 (or whatever cheaper medium exists). Nebula started out just using a "Youtube copycat" whitelabling service.

And yes, I realize they rejected it when it was raised as the alternative to data collection, preferring the regulators’ plan of making it still universally $0 and funding the whole operation on rainbows and wishes.

The paying relationship is not sufficient for these technologies that are required