Them wanting people to believe that this will lower the cost of internet service is laughable. Have TV ads lowered the cost of cable?

We need to think of the internet as a public utility. How absurd would it be if every time you used water in your home, you heard an advertisement playing from a speaker in the faucet.

> Them wanting people to believe that this will lower the cost of internet service is laughable. Have TV ads lowered the cost of cable?

It's a very important point; this false argument is often used. In truth, in the marketplace, goods are not priced at 'cost-plus'; i.e., they aren't priced by taking the cost to the vendor and adding a profit margin.

Goods are priced at the point that will maximize profit for the vendor; economists would say at the point that maximizes marginal profit. Colloquially, they charge as much as they can.

The fact that the vendor has another stream of income from Product B doesn't cause them to reduce their prices for Product A. Microsoft doesn't cut the price of Windows because they are making so much from Office.

> Microsoft doesn't cut the price of Windows because they are making so much from Office.

Microsoft did cut the price of Windows to get people to adopt it early on because they would be making so much money from Office.

Microsoft Word vs. WordPerfect, Excel vs. Quattro Pro and Lotus 1-2-3. These battles were won because of Windows and that cemented their position as industry leader.

Now that Microsoft is in a dominant position they don't cut the price of Windows as much, but to remain on top they do give the OEMs a very sweet per-unit deal they really can't refuse.

> Microsoft did cut the price of Windows to get people to adopt it early on because they would be making so much money from Office

If that's true (and that's not my understanding) they did it to gain marketshare and maximize profit, not because they already had enough profit. In that scenario, they cut the price of Windows to make even more from Office.

They cut short term profits in order to cement long-term ones, so yeah, they were maximizing profits but over a longer time-scale than one transaction.

They didn't cut the price. Rather they made a windows runtime available so you could run office on DOS. This was also available to third party ISVs.

Bundling for free is cutting the price.

The profit-maximizing price drops as the profit margin goes up. As service providers make more money by selling customer data, they'll be able to increase profits by lowering prices and bringing in more customer data. Of course, this assumes a significant amount of customers who have the option to switch providers or choose not to have internet access.

This is only half the argument, though. Yes, companies charge as much as possible, but prices go down when a competitor can offer a comparable good at a lower price. Some markets clearly have features that make competition harder.

What competition in the ISP space?

Agreed, but how do you see that applying in this situation? Privacy regulations apply either to all competitors or none.

I think both sides just argue past each other. Democrats promote government regulation as the solution without discussing the problems. Heavy regulation often leads to stagnation and lack of innovation. You also have to deal with regulatory capture since your politicians now have huge influence and are worth bribing.

Republicans argue for "free-market solutions" which are actually government granted or encouraged monopolies where no competition exists.

There lots of examples of free market capitalism making the world a better place and markets failing as well. There are examples government run services providing great consistent services and there are examples of government bureaucracies soaking up budget and graft in their own or lobbyists interest.

Which tool do you think will work best in this situation and why? How do you plan to deal with the inherent problems of government involvement in ISP regulation?

I'm just tired of "free market solves all" vs "corporation are evil, government is universal solution". We learn nothing and convince no one.

Every time I hear someone argue for the efficiencies of privatization, I think of my water utility emulating mobile carriers and billing me for "Anytime gallons" and "Nighttime gallons" and "Weekend gallons".

This is quite popular in Poland for electricity. It makes a lot of economic sense.

Same with Internet. Back in the days I had a plan like that, where Internet would be faster and wouldn't count towards your quota if used in the night. All the heavy downloads would be scheduled to run overnight

Instead, if you're in a drought-prone area, you get water bans.

... which is perfectly reasonable. What's your point?

I think his point is that price economics would allow you to at least have _some_ water if you wanted it bad enough to pay more.

EDIT: Perhaps more importantly, dynamic priceing could be more efficient than a regime in which you can use huge amounts of water at a low fixed cost, and then suddenly none when it runs out.

>I think his point is that price economics would allow you to at least have _some_ water if you wanted it bad enough to pay more

Right, and the point of a water ration is to ensure that everybody limits their water use to some prescribed amount.

What you and the OP are describing is arguably a bug, not a feature.

The point of contention here is not of price economics per se, but of politics. At issue is whether or not one should be able to circumvent a ration by virtue of his monetary resources. Some people (including myself) find this notion distasteful.

> ... which is perfectly reasonable. What's your point?

It shouldn't be this way. It serves no purpose. You first claim that everybody has access to resource X at a reasonable price (because we don't want to discriminate against poor people), then when resource X starts to run out, they enforce bans instead of charging more to people willing to pay a premium (and getting the resource first) and then using it to expand production and access to everyone.

This story plays out everywhere, whether in Soviet Russia or in California or in NHS.

This happens in Europe, at least with electricity, you can choose a tariff that is cheaper during the night and more expensive during daytime.

The TV Industry by and large cannot survive without funding by advertisers. Check the P&L of any channel. Without ads, you'd be paying a lot more - or in other words, the content wouldn't exist because of lack of market

> Have TV ads lowered the cost of cable?

Almost certainly.

So true. It's easy to forget this point. Do the math:

Take all the content available to a cable subscriber, and the money that goes into producing that content. Take out the ads and split the bill (in addition to the relatively low costs of operating/maintaining the cable company itself) among the subscribers. That's just covering costs; now add a bit of profit to motivate those companies to stay in business.

There's no question you'd be paying more - a lot more. We just don't think the ads are saving us money because we don't know any different - that's just the way TV has been since the beginning.

Another way to prove this to yourself is to think, could there be broadcast TV without ads? And of course, the whole broadcast model falls apart without advertising. But without broadcast to compete with, is it likely that basic cable would be as inexpensive as it is? Even if you're of the view that costs don't matter to price, only what the market will bear, it seems self-evident that the market will bear less when there's a free substitute of reasonable quality available.

Even if it did lower the price of the service, those advertisements aren't going to be purchased unless there's profit in it, and there isn't going to be profit in it unless they convince the people exposed to it to spend money on stupid crap.

Those poor people will pay one way or another. Given the indirectness and inefficiency involved in the advertising approach, I wager they'll pay more that way. And it'll be less fair: people with less willpower will pay more.

Advertising makes sense when direct payment is impractical. Broadcast TV is the classic example. It's really hard to charge money for it, so ads let you indirectly collect money from your viewers. On the internet, paywalls are practical technologically, but tend to add too much friction, so we get ads instead. But there's no reason for it here.

ISPs don't have to pay the content providers that cable does though.

haven't internet ads lowered the cost of pretty much everything on the internet?

Reminds me of Facebook's arguments in support of Free Basics.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-35197062

It makes sense. Poor people can't pay for privacy, now that it became a feature instead of a right.

First there is strong bias here, so we actually do not know really if it is true.

Second, lets imagine that poor people would prefer whipping instead of imprisonment (they can return to work sooner) or fine.

Should we follow the same logic here then and accept it?

In your example, "whipping", "imprisonment", and "[or] fine" are all examples of punishments for a crime.

Being poor is not a crime.

I think that's the point.

Of course being poor is not a crime. But we all may make mistakes. For example exceed the speed limit.

Say, instead of fine 50, I may agree to accept 5 whips with a wooden stick on my back. Because I need these 50.

So should we accept whipping the poor if they demand it?

I don't see how physical violence is on the level of some company paying to know you visited a porn site.

Both are violating ones decency. On different levels of course. In both examples decency is traded for money.

I would argue that violation of the online privacy is worse than whipping. No, the problem is not that somebody knows what specific content you are watching. The problem is that they find out you are poor.

Youtube once considered that I could be a stereotypic poor person living in the US. The result was ugly.

How about ads with privacy? They are not mutually exclusive.

> How about ads with privacy? They are not mutually exclusive.

Yeah, but internet advertising fetishizes "personalization" and quantitative metrics, which are predicated on invasions of privacy. Advertisers could put those toys down, and go back to more traditional, privacy-preserving advertising, but I don't think they have the maturity and willpower to do so on their own.

you're asserting that the reason why advertising organizations who are competing to deliver the most valuable advertising product to their clients end up invading people's privacy is a lack of maturity and willpower? You're insane if you believe that this problem is not systemic.

I was talking collectively about the ad-men and the companies hiring them. And yes, I think the group lacks the maturity and willpower to act ethically in the face of competing pressures.

That's called TV. Cost per reach point on TV is a lot lower than the internet which charges advertisers extra for "targeting"

Can be done... rates would have to go down below TV to work and even so will be attractive only for big advertizers (think billions in sales).. Smaller advertisers would have no interest in the medium without targeting

> How about ads with privacy? They are not mutually exclusive.

Mozilla attempted this on the Firefox home page. Nobody understood the point (partly Mozilla's fault for poor messaging) and it was roundly criticized for putting advertising in the browser, instead of providing a solution to funding websites without violating privacy.

Targeted ads already convert miserably, so they (unfortunately) sort of are mutually exclusive...

How would they know what kind of ad to show if they don't know anything about you?

The same way it used to work: you show the same ads to almost everyone based on the content, not the people. Not that I think advertisers will go for it.

That's considered "spray and pray" today. Today advertisers want data, data, data, and micro-targeting is everything. The entire advertising industry has become something akin to a private signals intelligence agency.

Today? For the past 20 years I've been hearing how data collection will enable advertisers to precisely target ads and that ads would go from being a nuisance to being useful.

It's not working very well. How much more data do they need to collect before it starts working?

They know what product I'm going to buy... after I've bought it. They've almost got it right; all they need is a time machine.

I love it when I've bought jewelry for my wife and every damned ad is for the same jewelry store. Hard enough hiding a gift, now I have to hide my browser like I'm sneaking around watching porn.

That's just what either private browsing or ad/tracking blockers are for now. Under the coming regime, they'll track where you've been but you'll still (for now) be able to block the resultant ads.

This is not the fault of the platform, but the advertiser.

When you see an ad that's too tailored most people just get scared anyway.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I don't believe that for a second.

I've seen relevant ads beside search results on Google, but that doesn't really take a lot of magic to figure out that when I search for "Aeropress", I'm interested in coffee.

Ads in podcasts have been somewhat effective as well. I use Blue Apron, I like Audible, I've checked out Squarespace, I bought a Casper dog bed. AFAIK, none of the podcasts know anything about me, but they do know generally who their audience is.

It's true. Here are two pages of references from Bruce Schneier. https://books.google.com/books?id=MwF-BAAAQBAJ&pg=PT194&lpg=...

> That's considered "spray and pray" today. Today advertisers want data, data, data, and micro-targeting is everything.

And even with all that, the most of the targeted ads aren't any more compelling than content-based "spray and pay."

IMHO, targeted ads are pointless unless they're a targeted to a search query.

I'm wondering how this is all going to play out with ad-blocking software and plugins...?

Are we going to see where - if you run such software - suddenly you can't browse any sites, or you can only browse very slowly?

Or will running ad-blocking software be considered illegal or something - because you're depriving potential profit from somebody?

Will ads slowly take over the entire experience? To the point where you just don't want to use the internet any longer (or at least the web)?

Will people move back to gopher and ftp (oh, we can only hope)? BBSs? Door games and MUDs to the rescue?

My wife and I have considered moving to a more rural area of our state - we're both tired of the city and of people in general. I've lamented about how out in such areas, internet service would be spotty or non-existent, but you know what?

Maybe that's a good thing, ultimately. If I need internet for some reason, I'll just mosey into town, send an email or two, then mosey back home.

These advertisers, their enablers, ISPs, and the corrupt political machine that supports it all? They can go f--- themselves.

wow, give me something i very much don't want while taking away something i very much want. Sounds more like corporate rights than civil rights.

Oh my God, that is low.

And quite frankly, for a of people, they're probably right. Especially because people don't understand what they are giving up, because it somehow has to do with "computers" and are therefore different from real life.

If, however you were to explain to a person, that this would be the same as his landlord knowing every single step he took in his home, when he took that step, what he was listening to when he took the step, who he was taking the step with, exactly how he looked when he took the step and use it to shoe advertising, he would cry foul and he would understand that this was not a small thing.

They'd probably also agree to slavery to get food and shelter

I can't imagine what they would be willing to do for a luxury like health care!

Low income people also would prefer spam and coolaid every single meal instead of starving - that doesn't mean it should be promoted as a good diet...

I think it's asinine "free market" religious nonsense. If we had done this ~100 years ago with phones being rolled out to rural areas, the free market would have said pay $1000 a month for phone service. Instead the government forced everyone to pay a subsidy so it'd be cheaper in rural areas, and even cheaper for poor people anywhere including cities.

No one complained about this.

So now the idea is privacy is a commodity to be purchased, and freedom from ads is a commodity to be purchased. It's every man for himself, that leads to more distrust, less cooperation, and more acrimony and I think it's incompatible with a civil society. This classist variety of Republican/conservative/capitalist - whatever label to put on it - is vile. It's neo-aristocracy, and it's anti-democratic.

If this business model is not OK for Comcast why is it OK for Google and the rest of the internet?

Ads over privacy?

Why can't we have Ads vs. Privacy? Income for Comcast can come from either at the cost of serving ads OR at the cost of privacy--not both. What the fuck?

They mean Comcast funded corporate control group? Calling it "civil rights" is an insult. This paid propaganda is just sickening.

On the plus side, the low-income group can probably get the privacy issue addressed through great customer service.

I have no problem with ads being targeted to me. It increases the likelihood something useful will pop up on my screen. I also don't mind using sites which are ad free, nor do I mind paying for ad-free services like YouTube Red.

Is there nothing Comcast won't do to screw the public?

This idea makes sense, empirically. There is a cost to provide internet, and low-income individuals may be more willing to provide a combination of valuable assets (cash & data), while higher income individuals would be willing to provide more cash in exchange for no data.

Regardless, the end payment is the same, it's just a question about how you want to pay.

Edit: For those who think this may be a money grab, remember that the government is getting tax revenue out of the profits ISPs make from monetizing your data. While the ethics of this are debatable, the alternative is zero additional government revenue. So the ethics of privacy need to be weighed against the ethics of providing programs for communities that could be beneficial.

If they provide a decent free connection (at least 10/2), and support it buy collecting your data, then fine. But to force it on people who pay for a connection makes zero sense.

But that's not how services are priced... you can't guarantee that how/what a private entity will cross-subsidize. The whole point of a Universal Service Fund (for telephony) is that there was no motivation for this kind of monetization.

As for the gov't getting tax revenue from selling the information, that's just unpersuasive. First, it's an incredibly indirect way of getting the revenue, and second that could be used to justify any profit-making activity, which makes it meaningless.

Isps already have an obligation to run lines to low income areas and are required to offer lowered income / lower speed tiers. This just subsidises it so that they make more money from another source.