Today's world, Money, "FREE"dom, Advertising, and the Future

I've been thinking a lot lately that there's been this weird trend of free expectations. This post mainly concerns software and digital media, but it's not limited to that. You see it here and on other sites all the time. People want to get their anime/hentai/manga/porn free and they get their panties in a bunch when they can't. And it doesn't stop there. People don't just want to avoid paying. They hate advertising and run software like ad block to strip ads from their user experience. Now I could simply call them selfish but that's not the point of this post. I think there's more to it than that.

Back to advertising, yes of course I remember the days when pop-ups were rampant and you couldn't hope to survive the internet without a blocker. That was entirely terrible and malicious. But those days are gone and yet people continue to demonize advertising. Now, before discriminating between good monetization strategies vs bad ones, we should all remember that companies and their websites don't run on fairy dust. YouTube was losing millions of dollars every day before Google found a good strategy for it. Content creators very frequently ask their users to whitelist or disable ad-block. And it's not out of greed. Even if you whitelist, it doesn't make much of a difference if you never click on any ad. And if you simply click on things without ever spending a penny (or giving out information, whether to someone malicious or not) then the purpose of the ad has been defeated. Someone somewhere has to bite the bullet, because advertising itself is not free. And let's be clear here, this is not me pleading to you to disable your ad-blockers. What I'm trying to say is that there may be a real problem here. It's not exactly a personal problem with you or me, but the ecosystem as a whole. We are in fact a part of that ecosystem and that's why I'm interested in discussing it.

Monetization has to happen. People need to feed their kids, people need to pay their bills, people need to buy computers so that they can enjoy their lovely hentai. FAKKU! too is a business like many others with its own employees and operating costs. I don't know about you, but I would have a lot more trouble enjoying hentai without it. Anyway maybe a more important example is the press. Think for a minute about how great our digital world is. Not only do we have the privilege of expedited access to news (sometimes immediately after an event), we have thousands on thousands of different sources for that information. We don't need to be spoonfed opinions from a single source. It's really incredible. But it also doesn't run on fairy dust. John Oliver has an interesting video about native advertising, which I strongly recommend watching. And he goes back to the main fact of the matter: we don't want to pay. And that is definitely a problem, because we need such a diverse press. Where are they going to get their money if we don't want to pay for the news and don't want to click on their ads? It seems to me at least, that this ecosystem is not sustainable, which has brought on this new trend of native advertising, as Oliver covers in his video.

And as for the people's expectations, things seem kind of crazy these days. I'll mention news again, because we expect to click on a news article without any barrier of entry. If you're aware of monetization in today's games I'm sure you know that "Free to Play" has become a standard business model. On mobile platforms it's everywhere, and they have things like "lite" versions too. And it's not just games, we often expect to get software free. How many people immediately think of GIMP if they have to do any image work that requires Photoshop? How many of us said screw Microsoft Office when we realized we could get Open Office or use Google Docs without paying a cent? We all use free e-mail servers. E-mail costs something too! There's a server somewhere that has your e-mails and processes new e-mails 24/7. There are hardware, maintenance, electricity, and operating costs that most people never see. I would actually laugh if anyone here paid for WinRAR. Anyhow this has all become very normal now and well when I step back, it's kind of ridiculous.

So if I'm right about this, then things need to happen, stuff needs to change. The ecosystem needs to evolve. And to some degree there have been some changes. A lot of content creators have turned to Patreon to keep themselves afloat. I personally have doubts about its sustainability but it certainly seems like a step up from how volatile things have been for them. We can consider freemium software a sort of "solution" but I'm really not a fan of that either. As for driving the press, I can't even imagine how that can be fixed. And yes, sometimes it can't be helped. Some businesses are doomed to fail, but I think that's not really relevant.

Please discuss.

Anything digital produces no money. Digital can improve the efficiency and productivity of physical means, but often marginally and that's all their direct contribution to economy. What does digital is the same that does a school: empowers people by giving them education, access to information, rising their morale, inspiring their creativity and mind, connecting them to cultures, feelings and other people, and improving their quality of life in diverse ways.

Free scholarship (the standard on the 90% of the planet) is a pure socialist method being sustainable by the means of taxes (produced by capitalist economy). Internet, just like school, is also socialist in nature, specially considering it lives, works and so by the teamwork of 3 billions people and counting. Governments, as centralist in power in nature, they can't handle the decentralized Internet, so we use other means aside taxes to make it live.

For instance, the bigger method by raw amount of money is donation, or if you want to call it like it really is, voluntary tax to decentralized micro governments. Followed by donations you have unpaid labor, in the name of honorable artists and programmers who contributes content and tools for the sake of fun and universal well being (for example, Google Chrome is mainly coded by unpaid programmers in a open source scheme). Followed by capitalist business who works directly for the productivity and efficiency of physical companies, like Above with Photoshop. Finally followed by hybrid capitalist/socialist business who profits by successfully quantifying the indirects impacts of Internet on economy and taking part of the bounty, sometimes in correct amounts and ways like Google (can be discussed, though), sometimes in incorrect amounts and unfair ways like Capcom.

Note: Sorry for edit and losing details, ;(, but I trough it may be better for the discussion to don't have a massive TL;DR and I think I synthesized it well enough and without losing what's important.

Now don't get me wrong, I personally believe in social principles. But I'd like to avoid that kind of political position because (people will be people) someone may jump in screaming nonsense. Free collaboration is an incredibly powerful tool that backs a lot of software and it's incredibly important. I don't think free is necessarily a bad thing. However, I can't jump onto the socialism boat until other problems are solved. What's in question here is the balance between expectation and reality.

Why can't we embrace socialism? For one thing we don't have free energy. Most computers are not solar powered. And I'm not talking about end-users. Servers cost a lot of money to build, run, and maintain. They have to scale, they have to be able to handle outrageous traffic if you're Reddit or Twitter. You need money to move these things. By now a major amount of businesses have realized that having a presence on the internet makes a very significant difference. It's a great way to generate exposure for your small business, especially in urban areas. Online shopping has been on the rise for a long time now. My point here being is that the internet is becoming/has become a key element for business around the globe. It has to be sustainable in some sort of way, no matter what your model or outlook is.

As for advertising, I'm not going after anyone in particular. I totally agree that the ad experience is horribly flawed. But it's still the standard today and I still believe the digital press is essential for today and the future. At this point in time I can't imagine how they will move forward with anything but advertising. But yes, advertisers have to fix a lot of things.

I still maintain that sustainability is necessary. The internet and software may not put things into the physical world, but it offers services that cannot be provided by any other means. Stuff like video chat, anonymous discussion boards, and as you said efficiency tools. What's more, the ability to rapidly distribute data across many different borders is something unprecedented.

And I'm not sure what you mean by paying for something that is non-productive. It sort of suggests the idea that the internet should remain separate from the real world. But again this won't be sustainable. The internet can't live off donations. YouTube and other sites will instantly collapse without large flows of money. If you want a social well being, protect the rights of the people (as well as net neutrality). If the internet tends toward socialist policies (and I too believe that it does) then it will eventually get there regardless of what happens. But until then I think people (and businesses) still need to invest money into the internet.

That's fake.

Servers are domestic PC's without optical drives, graphic cards and sound cards. Usually, servers are brought in groups, with that means you can make a more efficient use of power supply units and cases, so those two things are far cheaper than a domestic PC. Finally, most servers posses low to mid-low CPU's (Pentium 4 is still common!) and old hard drives (10-80GB!). On the rest you aren't saving, but hey, you're already kicking out more than two thirds of the costs already. Software is free because OS is Linux and most networks tools are free, too. Let's not forget about reduced prices when you make huge buys.

Bandwidth by other hand comes by the hand of our sacred optic fiber. It works at the speed of light. That translates on: watch this image, the whole thing is smaller than a single finger, and each "hair" is a fiber, and each fiber transmit on average 40 gigabytes per second. Wanna know something sweet? Those babies are theoretical immortal unless something broke them. There may be degradation that will request replacement, but the first optic fiber cable installed was 35 years ago and it's still working at 100%, so we can at least say for sure they last 35 years without troubles.

Wanna know a few funny facts? Actually the ones we're paying most the optic fibers costs are us, the domestic clients. In fact, around a 60% of our Internet plans costs comes only from paying optic fiber. Actually the ISP's prefer to do most the business with the domestic clients as they know for sure they will handle a permanent subscription if the service is good. That means ISP's are actually charging just a small part of the costs to the servers for being a riskier business.

So yeah, Internet is so cheap to sustain that if you make a 0.25% annual tax on U.S (roughly calculated in 0.23% actually), you can pay the current costs of all the servers of the world. And... actually we're doing already. People is donating far more money that the needed to sustain our networks. For example Wikipedia is receiving around 50.000.000 dollars each years on donations... and they just use roughly 1.200.000 of them on actual server/bandwidth costs. The rest? Beautiful million dollars salaries for doing nothing as Wikipedia content is provided by unpaid workers!

Each day... Internet is cheaper. Why? Because if someone noticed already, PC's are improving each year and our new pieces will have price of oldies in no time. More powerful PC's translates on servers who can handle more traffic by the same price. Bandwidth by other hand is getting cheaper, too! Why? Because as we're reaching maximum Internet availableness, optical fiber installation is slowing down, literally the unique raw cost for bandwidth, so prices are dropping and will drop to close to 0 in a few decades. Scaling is also slowing down! Why? Because already the 50% of humanity is connected, all it can do is to double a single time and it's the end of scaling, it's not exponential! Specially truth for U.S that reached their zenith on Internet users since 7 years ago.

Note: Servers doesn't possess keyboard, mouse, speakers or screens, neither. Actually, the 70% of the electricity costs of PCs comes from the screens and a 10% from speakers/headphones. A server running 75% all the time (average) wastes as little as 30$ per year. Optic fibers wastes close to 0$ to ever considerate.

Hard drive expenses are the same as domestic users for image/sound uploading. Video, programs and archives are actually a lot heavier and needs huge investment on hard drives, but the prices are still reasonable. You need to invest heavy on memory and more on CPU for videogame servers and related.

Money is produced by physical activities, so the digital activities doesn't produce money. They can affect the physical activities by improving efficiency and productivity, but that's just like a school or air traveling already, sustained mainly by taxes (or in this case, donations, hybrid business, unpaid honorable labor and advertisement).

I'd say your just seeing the free market in action. People want it free and don't want to see ad's so the producers find some other way of providing what people want while still paying the bills. As for if the current system is sustainable or not well if its not it will adapt to something better.

I'll not address everything, just a couple of things that sprang to mind while reading. Hope that's alright.

When it comes to ads, specifically on websites, I block them because, often, the ads are either intrusive or obstructing or plain fuck with my loading speed. It can take sixty seconds for a page with ads to load, while if I block all the ads, it takes twenty seconds. Yes, an extra forty seconds is not a lot of time, but when it's forty seconds for every page you visit, and you may visit a hundred in a day, that's more than six minutes of time, spent waiting. And yes, six minutes may not seem like a lot of time, but I spent hundred of dollars on my laptop, and I'm paying a lot of money each month for a good internet connection, so why should I spend ten minutes of my day waiting for pages to load when there is an easy solution? Not to mention that often the ads are worthless to me (I don't want to find random people in my area to fuck, I don't need to buy useless shit that I'll never use; if I want to buy something, I'll search for it on my own, without the aid of an ad). It's even worse when the ads make noise without my permission or distract me with bright colors that don't match the dark background of the page I am on.

In other words, the ads do nothing for me, do not help me in any way, and usually hinder me, sometimes in such a way that I will not visit that website, solely because the ads are too much trouble. To overcome these problems, I block the ads.

I know that without the ads, the sites couldn't exist, but the way the business world is supposed to work is that the business owner makes people want to pay him/her. If I don't want to visit a site because the ads are troublesome, then the site owner needs to find more suitable ads that will not piss off his/her customers. For example, Fakku ads are nice; I like looking at them, they fit the site, and they turn me on. Seeing them makes me feel better, the way ads are supposed to be. Now, sometimes I still block the ads on Fakku, usually when reading doujins because they cause me trouble, making the pages load more slowly than I would like, but I try to remember to turn it on when just browsing the forums. Because I like this site and want to support it, and because the ads are fitting and not troublesome. Just about every other site on the internet, however, fails at one or both of those things. So I block them. And I feel justified in doing so. It is the obligation of the business owner to make me want to give them money or do something that allows them to make money. After all, if a taxi service only hires rude drivers, I'm going to buy a bike and start riding it everywhere. In most cases, people do not have to use a particular business; that's one of the keys of capitalism, competition based on pleasing the customer.

As for things like free versions of services that cost money, like Microsoft Office and Google Space, that falls under the same umbrella: If there is a free and legal version that does the job, why should people pay for a separate product? It is the duty of Microsoft to give people a reason to buy their products, something that makes it far superior to the free things; if they cannot do that, then they fail as a business, at least in that one arena. Also, in this situation, outlawing the free versions would be tantamount to taking away people's basic freedoms; these free things were created by people, meaning that they could be created by regular people and not big companies, and the people that made them have chosen to give them out free: There has been no infringement, so there should be no recourse. For example, if I need paper, I have to go to the store and buy it, right? Except what if I keep scrap pieces of paper I find and write on them, or I keep receipts I get from stores from purchasing other things and write on the backs? I should not be forced to buy paper, simply to keep the paper companies in business, should I? I should not be punished for being inventive and finding my own solution, right?

WinRAR has a free trial period that never ends. That is their fault. They chose to have that, and if people use it, they are not breaking any rules. I am fine with having to click a button that basically tells WinRAR to fuck off every time I use it, that small thing doesn't bother me, so why should I pay WinRAR money? They could have made the product stop working after six months, could have done something to force people to buy the product. They did not. The fault lies with them. Should I feel an obligation to pay them, because I use their service so often? Maybe, but I feel that McDonald's and Wal-Mart should pay their workers a suitable living wage, and look at what's been going on with that, rampant discussion and argumentation over that for years. Business isn't about what should or should not be done - it's about results.

Furthermore, I am not rich. I cannot afford to pay for every single thing that I otherwise use for free. At times, I do not have enough money to buy all the food I need, so I have to skip meals and eat light for a few days. If I can't afford to buy food all the time, then why should I give money to WinRAR and Microsoft when I can use their services or similar ones for free?

If I was rich as all hell, I would pay for everything, I would spread it around and make sure everybody got enough. But I am not rich and never will be. I have to figure out ways to survive happily with the pittance that I get. And not paying for WinRAR is one of the ways I do it.

A couple thoughts on this whole sha-bang.

As someone who cares about the "vidya gaems" I don't hate Free to play models(Team Fortress is probably one of my most played games besides Melee) but we have to actually realize that sometimes that business model can be pretty fucking dark. A lot of their profits come from total addicts or the the clueless children of parent's. I'm all for freedom of choice in the marketplace of apps and ideas but Freenium games should probably not be advertised as free, and should always require a parent password before downloading.

As for ads, I don't mind certain ads.
Unfortunately a lot are:

• intrusive
  annoying
  take up bandwidth

I don't like the way youtube deals with ads, and if I can I'd rather support sponsors of a certain show or the creators directly.(sorry hun, but because someone wasted time watching your content doesn't always entitle you to money from their clicks). If you want you can always lock your content from non-paying visitors if your financial needs are the most important thing.

I think it's funny that you say that the "The ecosystem needs to evolve" when it has, since now it's more consumer oriented than ever. Sadly the most common solutions I hear is to guilt trip consumers out of control, shrink the market and regulate it to hell and back in favor of a few or those already in great standing.

I agree that we should be fine with advertisement and not expect things for free, but I disagree that the amount of advertisement has been "getting better" or "toned down." The older and older I get, the longer and longer commercial breaks become; now I'm even getting word of stations cutting and speeding up show footage in order to make more room for ads. Call me an aristocrat, call me a weaboo, but you could potentially be cutting and fast-forwarding through an art form there. Talk about mixing guacamole and twizzlers. If I'm in the middle of the finale of evangelion and suddenly the station fast forwards it and throws up a picture of some brand cola, I'm not going to be pleased. Furthermore, if I'm a show writer trying to get a point across, and someone tells me if I want my paycheck I need to let it get chopped by some guy from the soda industry, I'm going to be super not pleased, and probably not even go back to making shows knowing that's their fate. I really think that's one of the reasons why television's been growing worse and worse. That's not to say there aren't good shows, but still.