<story><title>Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-the-messy-expensive-split-between-facebook-and-whatsapps-founders-1528208641</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mycorrhizal</author><text>Maybe I&amp;#x27;m just not creative enough, but what is a better alternative?&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s say you have a subscriber model, but than what kind of world will it be where only the wealthy have access to these communication technologies and access to social information.&lt;p&gt;Or you have a hybrid ad model with the ability to opt out by paying some fee. Than what kind of world will that be when privacy is a luxury item limited to how much you can afford.&lt;p&gt;The best solution I can think of is keeping the current model, but adding regulation and government oversight to limit some of the most damaging effects i.e. creating platforms that abuse human psychology to keep people clicking and make them addicted to these platforms.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m genuinely interested in other models people suggest.</text></item><item><author>rm999</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve had a tremendous amount of respect for Mark Zuckerberg as a leader, and have gone out of my way to defend him in the past (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=17128369&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=17128369&lt;/a&gt;). I always envisioned whatsapp as a defensive purchase that would stay true to its initial vision (perhaps being used to prop up their other products in an unintrusive manner). But this article makes me realize Mark is s a one-trick advertising pony like half the other tech leaders out there.&lt;p&gt;His speil about how he&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;connecting the world&amp;quot; is undermined by his clear attempts to build a monopoly of social+communication, with an inefficient layer of distracting ads. Imagine a future where every time you want to electronically communicate with someone you have to spend mental energy filtering out ads. It&amp;#x27;s the equivalent of every road having a toll booth, directly paying into a rich person&amp;#x27;s bank account. This is the &amp;quot;connecting the world&amp;quot; Mark Zuckerberg has been trying to hide from those of us who aren&amp;#x27;t paying attention.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>In the past the function of the &amp;quot;phone company&amp;quot; was a paid for service which provided for your communication needs. You didn&amp;#x27;t have to listen to ads before you could talk to your friends but you did occasionally get unwanted calls.&lt;p&gt;This medium reached people rich and poor, all around the world.&lt;p&gt;The challenge here is greed.&lt;p&gt;One of the interesting topics in economics is the ability to subvert the supply-demand curve by extracting economic value without the participants awareness. In classical economics the equilibrium point is met when the buyer thinks they are paying too much and the seller thinks they are getting to little for a good or service. In the idealized experiment the buyer doesn&amp;#x27;t have any other choice, nor does the seller have any other customer to turn to.&lt;p&gt;But in our internet connected world there is an &amp;quot;invisible&amp;quot; (to the buyer) stream of value which is personal information about the buyer. To date there hasn&amp;#x27;t been a good way for the buyer to see or negotiate that value. GPDR helps that but it doesn&amp;#x27;t go far enough in some ways.&lt;p&gt;What GPDR doesn&amp;#x27;t supply (yet?) is the practical way of enforcing the theft of personally identifiable information for financial gain. So in your example of a hybrid ad model, if you &amp;#x27;opt out&amp;#x27; and now pay a fee, how do you know that they aren&amp;#x27;t still just selling your data? And if they are selling your data to get extra value out of you being a customer, what recourse do you have when you discover it? What risk are they taking by pursuing that path and maximizing their revenue?&lt;p&gt;EDIT: From the article -- &lt;i&gt;At the time of the sale, WhatsApp was profitable with fee revenue, although it is unclear by how much.&lt;/i&gt; (99 cents per year)</text></comment>
<story><title>Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-the-messy-expensive-split-between-facebook-and-whatsapps-founders-1528208641</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mycorrhizal</author><text>Maybe I&amp;#x27;m just not creative enough, but what is a better alternative?&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s say you have a subscriber model, but than what kind of world will it be where only the wealthy have access to these communication technologies and access to social information.&lt;p&gt;Or you have a hybrid ad model with the ability to opt out by paying some fee. Than what kind of world will that be when privacy is a luxury item limited to how much you can afford.&lt;p&gt;The best solution I can think of is keeping the current model, but adding regulation and government oversight to limit some of the most damaging effects i.e. creating platforms that abuse human psychology to keep people clicking and make them addicted to these platforms.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m genuinely interested in other models people suggest.</text></item><item><author>rm999</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve had a tremendous amount of respect for Mark Zuckerberg as a leader, and have gone out of my way to defend him in the past (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=17128369&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=17128369&lt;/a&gt;). I always envisioned whatsapp as a defensive purchase that would stay true to its initial vision (perhaps being used to prop up their other products in an unintrusive manner). But this article makes me realize Mark is s a one-trick advertising pony like half the other tech leaders out there.&lt;p&gt;His speil about how he&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;connecting the world&amp;quot; is undermined by his clear attempts to build a monopoly of social+communication, with an inefficient layer of distracting ads. Imagine a future where every time you want to electronically communicate with someone you have to spend mental energy filtering out ads. It&amp;#x27;s the equivalent of every road having a toll booth, directly paying into a rich person&amp;#x27;s bank account. This is the &amp;quot;connecting the world&amp;quot; Mark Zuckerberg has been trying to hide from those of us who aren&amp;#x27;t paying attention.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eitland</author><text>&amp;gt; Maybe I&amp;#x27;m just not creative enough, but what is a better alternative?&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Let&amp;#x27;s say you have a subscriber model,&lt;p&gt;There was a company with a subscriber model. It worked pretty well and we loved it. Facebook bought it and destroyed the very idea behind it.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; but than what kind of world will it be where only the wealthy have access to these communication technologies and access to social information.&lt;p&gt;The same kind of world were all kinds of tech is expensive at first and then becomes cheaper and cheaper as it approaches and enter mainstream usage?&lt;p&gt;Nobody would argue today that we should have refused luxury cars to add airbags because &amp;quot;what kind of world would it be where only the rich has access to safer cars&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;In the same way we shouldn&amp;#x27;t argue against people paying for better products.&lt;p&gt;That said, I think WhatsApp were planning to add other paid options like API access etc before they got eaten by Facebook.</text></comment>