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Discord starts down the dangerous road of ads this week
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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Exactly! Ads are designed to force you to engage with them. Even noticing the ad at all is engaging with it, and they've got teams of psychologists figuring out how to make that second of engagement influence you.
People who dismiss the influence of advertisements seem to forget that companies wouldn't spend a combined $615 billion globally every year on something that people can just "choose" not to engage with.
Genuine question, no snark: what do you think a company like discord should do for revenue? I agree that ads suck, and selling of personal data is gross, but are there good examples out there of orgs generating revenue in an agreeable way that doesn't violate their customers while maintaining or surpassing their expenses?
they already generate revenue in an agreeable way. they have two methods of paying them: Nitro and Server Boosts. they made $440 million dollars of revenue in 2020 off this. if your business can't find a way to be sustainable off of half a billion dollars then it probably doesn't deserve to continue existing.
Right, I guess that's another approach, locking certain features behind a paywall. I guess that's less egregious than the other two options provided that users can still get a wholesome experience from a free tier.
I think most of us are just tired of the fact that these companies can run at a loss, wait until they become default by starving out the rest, and then go full throttle towards making it the worst experience possible. I have no issue with leaving discord, the part that stings is porting all of my favorite bots and members over.
Its a nice wake up call that free things don't last, or atleast are never truly free.
nothing, we should move to open, federated platforms not unlike lemmy. everyone contributes a little, thats what the internet was designed for.
even if it fell in popularity, theres a reason IRC is still very much alive, going and ad-free.
And how has the Lemmy thing worked out? Seems Reddit didn't even notice the people fleeing and most have gone back as the engagement here has dropped alot.
it will take time. the digg > reddit transition took a while too.
in the meantime its much better here imo