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Comment by starbugs | Hacker News Reader

Is it maybe finally time to get a real business model?

As with any regulation, there are issues which need to be sorted out. But one thing is crystal clear to me: this helps making people aware of what is happening to their data and their lifes. There is no excuse for not being able to come up with a viable business model without productizing users and making them subject to social and political manipulation.

I wonder why no one writes about how products could use GDPR and other regulations to their advantage instead of whining about the demise of the ad industry.

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> There is no excuse for not being able to come up with a viable business model without productizing users and making them subject to social and political manipulation.

How so? TV and media have been doing it since forever - not as efficient but still. It's a valid model if you want open, pluralistic services.

If old media advertising is so great, then why is it necessary to collect more and more data about individuals, up to the point where you can target them personally? Would you call TV advertising a productization of the consumer?

Why do e.g. FB not offer a level of service that is viable without personally identifiable information being used for targeting?

There seems to be a BIG difference in the effectiveness and mechanisms of statistical target groups vs. individual targeting. If you've followed the Cambridge Analytica scandal, you know to what degree this information can be abused.

I agree that there have to be limits , but it's not an 0/1 question. Facebook should even be treated as a special case because it's a monopoly, but again it's not 0/1. I doubt they can offer the same service without targetting - facebook makes $100+ from each user in US or western europe. If they made 10% of that they couldn't offer to e.g. store all your photos and vids for free.

And lets not kid ourselves, very few people would pay $100+ for facebook, even though it would be interesting to see them offer that option.

But people already pay that money (on average), just not directly to FB.

If I need to lure users into using my platform by pretending to be "free" so I can get a monopoly going, then that just underlines my point of a non-viable business model.

> If I need to lure users into using my platform by pretending to be "free" so I can get a monopoly going

You just described every startup in SV, but in any case facebook did not have ads platform in its growth phase.

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