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Comment by birken | Hacker News Reader

To offset all the negative comments, I'll agree with the premise of the article: Wordle was a nice thing that didn't seem to have any of the negative emergent behaviors of his past projects.

It's a fun thing that everybody in my family does and gets to chat about every day. It's very cool that a guy wrote a piece of software that has positively impacted millions of people, and it's very cool that he was able to make money from it, and it's very cool that it is being supported and maintained in perpetuity by its new owner.

I also don't understand all the complaining about ads and trackers. I guess every single person here releases every project completely out of the goodness of their own hearts without any analytics or ads or any aspirations to monetize it? If so, good for you, but just because something may be monetized (probably tastefully) at some point in the future doesn't take away from the fact that a cool and fun thing was created.

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> [...] just because something may be monetized (probably tastefully) at some point in the future doesn't take away from the fact that a cool and fun thing was created

Just because something may be monetized at some point in the future doesn't mean tracking your users without their consent.

I get a consent popup every time I open Wordle: https://files.catbox.moe/sgc4r4.jpeg

that's weird. I play Wordle everyday, I don't remember ever seeing this window.

It's likely a location-dependent notification, based on regional laws and regulations. Disabling cookies probably also disables it storing your notification.

Monetizing small projects is a fool's game, because the amount that application authors make is tiny. Ad platforms on the other hand, they certainly benefit, because they capture the long tail of applications and get access to a wealth of information.

(in fact, if anything, the fact that applications are only used by a small userbase is a benefit to ad platforms -- because it provides precise detail about the kind of applications that particular users have installed)

If your application becomes extremely successful, then certainly you could consider adding monetizing strategies to pay yourself and the infrastructure costs of the service. But what are those costs? They can, in many cases, be tiny - especially if you allow your application to run on the user's own device.

Monetizing using advertising doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me for most software authors, and I think it's an unfair system where authors and users both lose out.

> I also don't understand all the complaining about ads and trackers.

Then be clear about your intent to make money. If you have a product, sell it. I'm tired of being treated like a rat where my life is a maze with god knows who or what watching my every move trying to think of ways to coax money out of my wallet while selling that data to fatten theirs continually. Stop with the "strings attached" freemium crap, analytics behind the scenes tracking, and dark pattern BS. I used to be happy to pay a few bucks for a good app. Now everyone thinks their entitled to continual money streams from ads.

I agree with you but This is a consequence not an active decision. Digital advertising is highly profitable. If we want less ads and trackers, make that not so with a heavy advertising revenue tax. Wordle would never have gone viral with even a $1/month paywall. People (writ large) don't care about privacy and have embraced the ad model. I think a patron based system is the best avenue forward for indie content given where we are now. People will balk at a subscription for anything that is free today.

> I guess every single person here releases every project completely out of the goodness of their own hearts without any analytics or ads or any aspirations to monetize it?

Barring work, where I don't really have a say, my own projects have at times included usage metrics, it's always been easy enough to switch them off, and the goal has purely been a "how is this used" rather than "give me data I can sell for a dollar to GloboAdTech(tm)".

Nothing gets to stay as just itself. It has to bend and change to work within capitalism, to generate wealth for whoever owns it..

I'm happy for Wardle, it was a nice payday for him, and shifts the ire for any percieved "issues" away from an individual. But I can also mourn the loss of a "pure" thing to the maws of profit-driven ventures.

Maybe it isn't bad yet, but you'll forgive us, for having seen this stageplay numerous times before, and instinctively humming the next song where things get bad.

>Nothing gets to stay as just itself. It has to bend and change to work within capitalism, to generate wealth for whoever owns it..

No, it doesn't. There's obviously a financial incentive to do these things, sometimes a very strong one, but it always remains a choice.

Barring work? So basically you do the same but hide under the cover it’s your work? The same work you chose and where you could decide to quit if it was really against your principles? You do have a say. You have the ability to walk away.

It’s also work for him.

Never seen someone on such a high horse they're suffering hypoxia.

Not all of us can work on eco-collective shade-grown organic carbon-neutral farms for orphans and kittens, such as yourself.

And, to clarify, the most we do with analytics in work, is usally plumbing in Google Analytics (satan, the devil, belezbuub yadda yadda) and wiring up the metrics/actions for that site/apps particular flows to give data on who comes from where for marketting contracts, and how effective certain areas are (are people dropping out during checkout? Do people struggle with using x feature? or do they just never open it?)

> Nothing gets to stay as just itself. It has to bend and change to work within capitalism, to generate wealth for whoever owns it..

This is not an inevitable conclusion. I can cook brunch for my friends without requiring it to be a capital transaction in the marketplace or without the eventual goal of opening up a pancake store.

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