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Comment by callmeed | Hacker News Reader

> The internet is other people, and what we get is what people, on the whole, want.

This seems a little simplistic because you take manipulation, hacking, externalities and profit motive out of the equation. In the real world, did people want despots and obesity epidemics?

On the Internet, did people want banner ads, DRM, and a loss of privacy?

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>people want banner ads, DRM, and a loss of privacy

People wanted social services, the ability to watch cat videos yesterday, and to not have to pay anything for it.

Other people wanted money for those services. So a trade happened.

This is like asking "In your manstion, did you really want to pay $10,000,000 for it?" Sure it would have been nice to have a free mansion.

People getting robbed tend to prefer losing their wallet to getting shot. Doesn't mean those are the options they'd prefer to choose between.

If asked, people tend to prefer getting everything for free on a silver platter. That doesn't mean it's workable, even assuming we could come up with enough silver to get everyone their own platter.

I'll take my free stuff on a machine-stamped tray of 316 steel. I don't need anything fancy, just so long as it's piled high with the fulfillment of my every desire, provided completely gratis.

Now that you mention it, I think I would like a silver platter. Just put it on the steel one. Actually, make it two, so I can still use one while the other is being polished. And have a silver polisher bring the next tray. And make sure she has read Dune, and has a D.V.M. with a specialty in herpetology.

What's that? My choices are actually between a gaping stab wound and a turd sandwich? I'll take the sandwich, I guess....

It's a little more complicated than that. Many consumers of these services don't realize that they've made the bargain of trading privacy for cat photos. Even the ones that do may not fully understand what they've given up.

I'm reminded of the news story a few years ago where Target effectively broke news of a teen pregnancy to the girl's dad.[0] I doubt the teen realized that by shopping at Target she was agreeing to divulge information about her teen pregnancy, but that was the deal she brokered when she bought lotion and prenatal vitamins using a credit card instead of cash.

[0] http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targe...

That really doesn't sound much different than people not understanding they could have bought an identical panel TV at half price if they just bought a different brand. Information asymmetry makes some people rich.

> On the Internet, did people want banner ads, DRM, and a loss of privacy?

You have to consider it in terms of tradeoffs instead of absolute "wants," but yes. We apparently want banner ads more than subscription services. DRM is apparently a cost we're willing to pay in order to enjoy entertainment, and privacy seems to be less valuable than convenience and connectedness.

Not saying I, or anyone in particular, values things that way, but I do think we've ended up with what "we" want.

We didn't end up with what "we" want, we ended up with what Moloch[0] wants. Its an important distinction. Market economy and other feedback loops we run on produces results that are only partially aligned with human needs. There can be literally solutions that no one on Earth wants or needs, and yet they get created because they're local optimas. People have every right to reject and fight results they didn't want. It's how we keep the system aligned with human goals.

[0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

It's wrong to say that the outcome we've arrived at is necessarily the one we wanted. Local/initial conditions, availability and options, and a whole mess of other things make it so that's not necessarily true at all.

I would suggest people really just want the effortless nature of banner ad consumption. They don't want to do work. Banner ads (advertiser pays) are opt-out and subscription services (or consumer pays) are opt-in. Further each site has to be opt-ed into manually over and over, and then you get to deal anxiety over the whole can I actually unsubscribe thing etc. So you are just trading being juiced in one way for be milked in another.

Further even if we had consumer-pays-for-content sites as low friction as advertiser-pays-for-content sites they still would likely converge towards having advertisements (ultimately maybe less, maybe not) to maximize earnings.

I think there are solutions to these problems but I think they require us to first rethink the assessment and reward of creativity, talent and effort in scarcity-free systems.

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