Re:Vivaldi co-founder: Advertisers 'stole the internet from us'
by rapind on Sunday March 12, 2023 @02:45PM
(#35124385)
If you gave them free coffee for a few years though and then started charging $5 then it’s a lot harder to argue that it costs money to make coffee. How the hell were you able to give it away for free for the last few years if it costs money to produce?!
Advertising enabled this model. It makes people value your work less because it is perceived to be free, even though in reality you might be raking in way more money due to the wider reach (no cost friction).
Advertising is literally the root problem here. The expectation of free didn’t come from somewhere else. Also, not all digital assets are expected to be free. Only those that advertising got it’s claws into.
We'd all like a free coffee, but people glay pay $5 at Starbucks every morning because they know things cost money. Ask these same people for $5 to install an app on their phone – that was built over years by a team of hundreds – and they will flip out. People who used to buy a single $5 newspaper or magazine from the newsstand will not pay $5 for a monthly subscription to the same paper.
There's a fundamental disconnect in how people value digital assets, and that is why the internet is the way it is.