<story><title>Who&apos;s doing this to my internet?</title><url>http://veekaybee.github.io/who-is-doing-this-to-my-internet/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>golergka</author><text>Users.&lt;p&gt;Users always talk that they would love to pay. The problem is, they never do. They blog and write on forums about what they would like to see, but the things they write are always very, very different from what they actually do, according to the data.&lt;p&gt;You remember how in this whole Reddit debacle Pao said that &amp;quot;most of users don&amp;#x27;t really care about this scandal&amp;quot; and got downvoted to hell? It could very well be true, but users who were constantly around subreddits that were involved in the drama couldn&amp;#x27;t believe it. They are sure that evil corporate suits are out of touch with reality because they &amp;quot;don&amp;#x27;t even use their own service&amp;quot; and consume the information in form of PowerPoint presentations. But those suits are very well in touch with reality — it is a couple of SQL queries away from them, actually. (And I see that &amp;quot;managers&amp;quot; are getting more and more literate in terms of analytics, by the way — SQL and R aren&amp;#x27;t really that hard, and often you have much more user-friendly analytic services at your hands).&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not saying that big websites don&amp;#x27;t do bullshit. Of course they do. But when they do something that users &lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;actually&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt; don&amp;#x27;t like, users punish them in the most harsh way possible: with their wallets. Don&amp;#x27;t you remember how internet used to be? The hundreds of popups, for example — turns out, users didn&amp;#x27;t like it enough to install Firefox, so these guys went out of business. I could recall more examples like this, but this comment is already too wordy; you get the picture.&lt;p&gt;If you want to stop Buzzfeed, don&amp;#x27;t click clickbait and shame (in a constructive way — without calling them idiots, but making them feel a little bit low-brow, basic manipulation isn&amp;#x27;t that hard) your facebook friends for reposting such bullshit. And if you won&amp;#x27;t succeed, you&amp;#x27;ll just have to face the reality of being one in several billions.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>6stringmerc</author><text>Correlative:&lt;p&gt;Auto enthusiast site commenters claiming &amp;quot;If Manufacturer A would build this car with X motor, Y drivetrain, and at Z price, I&amp;#x27;d totally buy that!&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;If only Manufacturer B would bring Car XYZ to the US it would be a huge hit!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;If history is any indicator, no, those types of vehicles will not sell well. Recently I&amp;#x27;ve seen the discussion around the Chevrolet SS (Holden import), because while on paper it&amp;#x27;s on par with other performance sedans, it&amp;#x27;s selling very poorly. Granted, it had low expectations by GM, but it&amp;#x27;s just an example of this mentality &amp;#x2F; vocal minority over-inflating their self-importance in the grand scheme of things.</text></comment>
<story><title>Who&apos;s doing this to my internet?</title><url>http://veekaybee.github.io/who-is-doing-this-to-my-internet/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>golergka</author><text>Users.&lt;p&gt;Users always talk that they would love to pay. The problem is, they never do. They blog and write on forums about what they would like to see, but the things they write are always very, very different from what they actually do, according to the data.&lt;p&gt;You remember how in this whole Reddit debacle Pao said that &amp;quot;most of users don&amp;#x27;t really care about this scandal&amp;quot; and got downvoted to hell? It could very well be true, but users who were constantly around subreddits that were involved in the drama couldn&amp;#x27;t believe it. They are sure that evil corporate suits are out of touch with reality because they &amp;quot;don&amp;#x27;t even use their own service&amp;quot; and consume the information in form of PowerPoint presentations. But those suits are very well in touch with reality — it is a couple of SQL queries away from them, actually. (And I see that &amp;quot;managers&amp;quot; are getting more and more literate in terms of analytics, by the way — SQL and R aren&amp;#x27;t really that hard, and often you have much more user-friendly analytic services at your hands).&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not saying that big websites don&amp;#x27;t do bullshit. Of course they do. But when they do something that users &lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;actually&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt; don&amp;#x27;t like, users punish them in the most harsh way possible: with their wallets. Don&amp;#x27;t you remember how internet used to be? The hundreds of popups, for example — turns out, users didn&amp;#x27;t like it enough to install Firefox, so these guys went out of business. I could recall more examples like this, but this comment is already too wordy; you get the picture.&lt;p&gt;If you want to stop Buzzfeed, don&amp;#x27;t click clickbait and shame (in a constructive way — without calling them idiots, but making them feel a little bit low-brow, basic manipulation isn&amp;#x27;t that hard) your facebook friends for reposting such bullshit. And if you won&amp;#x27;t succeed, you&amp;#x27;ll just have to face the reality of being one in several billions.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>davedx</author><text>&amp;gt; They blog and write on forums about what they would like to see, but the things they write are always very, very different from what they actually do, according to the data.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s because content providers make it fucking impossible to buy their content a lot of the time!&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been looking into this here (the Netherlands) for the last 12 months or so. It is so incredibly hard to go into a pay-per-view movie service, whether that&amp;#x27;s a cable TV video store, Netflix, Apple TV or what-the-fuck-ever-else, search for a fairly popular movie you like that came out in the last 5-10 years, and actually BE ABLE TO BUY IT.&lt;p&gt;Content providers are almost entirely at fault here. (I know this as I&amp;#x27;m currently working at a cable TV company). They insist on negotiating individual contracts for restricted selections of (movie, series, whatever) content with each streaming&amp;#x2F;VOD provider individually. They will happily let customers buy an SD movie but charge them again, 2x, for a HD movie. They throw up all kinds of hurdles when it comes to recording TV in the cloud -- it is LEGALLY DIFFICULT to just store one copy of a recording for multiple customers.&lt;p&gt;The list goes on and on, it will drive you crazy if you have to deal with it.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; But those suits are very well in touch with reality — it is a couple of SQL queries away from them, actually. (And I see that &amp;quot;managers&amp;quot; are getting more and more literate in terms of analytics, by the way — SQL and R aren&amp;#x27;t really that hard, and often you have much more user-friendly analytic services at your hands).&lt;p&gt;Those suits are in touch with reality indeed -- they see that this business model has worked and continues to work, despite The Pirate Bay. They just need a large enough army of lawyers to maintain their dominance, both over distributors and customers (via lawsuits and website takedowns).&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t blame the users for the clusterfuck digital content distribution is. It is the content providers who are to blame. They screw the artists, the distributors, the end users, as hard as they can, for as long as they can.</text></comment>