The end of a business model on the Internet?

[cobito]

This post is a kind of continuation of this lament that I published back in 2018.

I'm not usually an avid consumer of content on the Internet. I read some news from some newspapers, I take walks on Reddit and when I have half an hour to kill at home, I watch some videos about retro topics, games, electronics and things like that.

In that post from more than 5 years ago, I got nostalgic about what the web was like in the beginning of times: at the end of the 90s and the beginning of the 2000s. Since then, I have already read several articles about the shittification of the Internet, so I'm glad to know that it's not just pure nostalgia but that something has really happened.

The reason for writing this post is that in recent weeks, I have seen a new change on the Internet and I don't know if they are my imaginations or something has stopped working.

I hear more and more Youtubers complaining that their income is not what it used to be. And we're not talking about small drops but very considerable reductions. So much so that some of them who are dedicated exclusively to producing videos at the moment, are already talking about looking for another job to cover lost income.

In addition, Alphabet seems to have declared war on ad blockers to the point of preventing video viewing if you don't allow advertising to come out in the browser. The company has gone to such an extreme with this, that if you use a non-Chrome browser that pretends to respect user privacy (I believe that at this point there is only Firefox left), it introduces artificial delays in JavaScript code so that it takes longer to load. In essence, it is boycotting everything that is not Chrome with its Manifest V3, whose entry into force (was it this summer?), will make it impossible to even install ad blockers in the browser.

Then you see other things a bit strange, like the adventures and misadventures of Twitter and the caricaturesque attempts to try to monetize a social network that seemed like a money-making machine (or at least that's what I thought), but that in reality was a black hole of bills.

On the other hand, for a few days (or weeks), all or almost all Spanish newspapers, force you to pay if you want to reject cookies. That is, you have to pay yes or yes, either with your data or with your money.

I have nothing against these business models. As for the newspapers, they have costs that they have to cover and it's normal that they want to charge for the service. There, everyone has the option to choose to read or stop reading what they want. With Youtube, the issue is perhaps more complex due to its dominant position and the lack of real alternatives for all those who want to make money with their videos. But I won't go into that. And about Twitter, I find it surprising that a company at its zenith and valued at an unimaginable amount of money, could have so many difficulties to become profitable (and I'm talking about before its purchase).

The question is that in a very short time, certain platforms and newspapers, have begun to try to increase their income in a way (I think) a bit aggressive. So much so that in many cases it seems that they are slapping the user and trampling on content producers. And they have all done it practically at the same time. I won't go into the trap about the possible consequences of mistreating users and content creators. The result of all that will be seen over time.

I don't know why this has happened just now. If I do a more or less economic analysis, I would say that the fact that getting money at the moment costs a fortune (due to the rate hikes), has made that philosophy of "everything for free" definitively unsustainable. It's no longer possible to grow the media from nothing. Now you have to earn it for real. And it's possible that the real cost of things is what we are seeing: cuts in income for producers, barriers to ad blockers and obligation to pay to visit certain pages. I come to this conclusion only because the shittification of the Internet exploded precisely in an era of historically low interest rates and part of that model seems to be mutating right now that rates are as they are. But in reality, I have no idea.

The good thing is that Hardlimit is on the sidelines of all this, it doesn't affect us. The bad thing is that I don't understand why these things happen.

Be it for the reason that it is, the fact is that it is happening and I have the feeling that the Internet is going to be from now on a place quite different from what we have seen in the last 10 years. Perhaps it is a new opportunity for all those sites that publish their content for nothing, without looking for anything in return, as in the old days.

Or perhaps we will end up missing this era that could be coming to an end.

[Sylver]

You are very right @cobito. Regardless of the reason or reasons, we are witnessing a paradigm shift with all the letters.

That process that you alluded to in 2018 I see that has been imposed in a resounding way. From my perspective, what I see is that today the internet is made by people 90%, and the rest by the large corporations that "enable" it, so to speak.
That responds to the fact that the content is increasingly of worse quality (in global terms, with its obvious exceptions), because in my understanding, anyone can get on the bandwagon of creating content on the internet driven by the opportunity to earn money from home and without schedules.

Being "the fashionable job" in this century, it is sold everywhere, in motivational courses, in coaching sessions, in financial literature, etc. In the end, it ends up spreading to the last corner.
I believe that is the main reason why we find increasingly poor quality content when searching on the internet.

Regarding the change in business model, with the issue of cookies and subscriptions, I believe that everything is due to the change in the laws that protect the user. For some time now they have been toughening up in the face of websites, and as such many of them have had no choice but to reconfigure the system by which they obtained income, adapting it to legality but looking for a way to continue obtaining their livelihood.
They have seen it clearly: "We have to allow by law that you reject cookies if you wish, but in return no one forbids us to charge you for entry".

I suppose that something similar must be going through the mind of the leadership of Alphabet. Seeing that the business "is slipping through their fingers", they are looking for the most decisive way to guarantee income. And it is something that has happened many more times in history. The one who manages to eliminate the competition ends up staying with the cake.

And regarding Twitter (now "X"), it is nothing more than the pastime of, literally, the richest man on the planet. Everything that happens and how it happens there does not have to make the least sense. But I suppose that the issue of subscriptions and "promises of remuneration for interactions" will also go in that line.

What remains to be seen is the result over time.
For convenience, it is most likely that the average user will swallow the "new conditions" of the internet and contribute to the sustenance of this (whether with cookies or with subscriptions).
But it would be interesting to see the other possibility. If the bulk of internet users decided to stand up and stop consuming that type of websites or content, "taking refuge" in "free" places like Hardlimit or similar...
Would the internet fall?
Really, it would be more likely the fall of the main corporations or companies that administer the most popular sites, but it is an attractive way to say it.

I bet that we will not see that last assumption.
The internet has made us more comfortable and practical as a society. The immediacy today is worth much more than privacy, and sometimes something more than a subscription.
In a way, those companies have benefited greatly from the internet growing and evolving without costing money to the end user. Even offering benefits.
Because there is nothing like giving a human being something they like, letting them become addicted over time, and then being able to start charging them for it.
How to give up a way of life for not paying €3.99 per month?

(It is my humble and not very elaborate opinion. Do not take it too literally )

Saludos!

[pos_yo]

Your reflection is interesting and I am quite pessimistic about it. The **Big Tech** companies such as **Alphabet, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Meta and Tencent** are taking a dominant position in the market and the authorities are not managing to regulate them effectively. They talk about China regulating internet traffic to control information and censor non-optimal content, but the alternative does not seem correct to me either, a total deregulation where the strongest (richest) prevails. The contrast between smaller companies where their revenues are dwindling every year and these **Big Tech** companies is alarming. The revenues of the latter are growing year by year by millions of dollars... Not even the **"free"** alternatives seem like a solution to me because they need these big techs for their hosting, data traffic, etc... In short, either the authorities start to restrict or we are in trouble.

[kynes]

The newspapers' thing is a requirement from the Spanish data protection agency. They have ordered that users be given the option to not have cookies, and they have looked for a way to comply with this, and at the same time, be able to invoice what they would lose in advertising.

I think in the movie "The Social Network" they said something like that if something on the internet is free, the product is you, and I think that is totally true. The advertising segmentation options that Meta offers are scary, it's a bargain for advertisers, but if you care about data privacy, it's pretty scary.

A silly example, I remember talking to my wife at lunch about having to buy flights for Intergift, a trade fair at Ifema. In the following weeks she kept seeing ads on her Instagram for tickets to Intergift, and I hadn't done any work on it, it was simply that Instagram in the background picked up that I mentioned the word, and it was enough for them to bombard her with advertising.

You have to monetize, but there should be a limit.

[cobito]

@Sylver said in The end of an Internet business model?:

From my perspective, what I see is that today the internet is made up of people 90% of the time, and the rest are the big corporations that "enable" it, so to speak.
This responds to the fact that the content is becoming increasingly poor quality (in global terms, with its obvious exceptions), because in my opinion, anyone can get on the bandwagon of creating content on the internet driven by the opportunity to earn money from home and without schedules.

I think this is key and this may sound a bit classist, but the popularization of the Internet has made it easier to get here. Before, you could also find filthy trash full of advertising and links to es-facil (that thing for which you were paid to receive advertising by mail and if you sent referrals, you were given a percentage). But the proportion of quality content (or at least, that pretended to be), was much greater. I think this could be so because in the late 90s and early 2000s, only people with a minimum of knowledge and interest in computer science and technology accessed the Internet, more interested in the medium itself and the novelty than anything else.

Surely now there is much more quality content than before, but it is overshadowed by the junk.

@Sylver said in The end of an Internet business model?:

And regarding Twitter (now "X"), it is nothing more than the pastime of, literally, the richest man on the planet. Everything that happens and how it happens there does not have to make the slightest sense. But I suppose that the issue of subscriptions and the "promises of remuneration for interactions" will also go in that line.

It is clear that it is a toy but it never ceases to surprise me that a company with a market capitalization of 40 billion at the time of its purchase was not profitable. It is almost as if it was a zombie company that was afloat thanks to easy credit. Was that worth it? A bit strange, really.

@Sylver said in The end of an Internet business model?:

What remains to be seen is the result over time.
For convenience, the most likely thing is that the average user will swallow the "new conditions" of the internet and contribute to the sustainability of this (whether with cookies or with subscriptions).
But it would be interesting to see the other possibility. If the bulk of internet users decided to stand up and stop consuming that type of websites or content, "taking refuge" in "free" places like Hardlimit or similar...

If we were in the 90s where you had to wait 5 or 10 minutes from when the computer was turned on until a web was shown in the browser, surely the second would happen. But in an era where a video longer than 10 seconds is excessively long or where the most read newspapers on the Internet are those that generate the most shameful clickbaits, the first will happen. The vast majority wants convenience and direct content in the vein.

@pos_yo said in The end of an Internet business model?:

Big Tech such as Alphabet, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Meta or Tencent are having a dominant position in the market and the authorities are not knowing how to effectively regulate. They talk about China regulating internet traffic to control information and censor non-optimal content but the alternative does not seem correct to me either, a total deregulation where the strongest (rich) prevails.

I don't remember where I read that the federal government of the USA turned a blind eye to anti-monopoly laws and the abuses of dominant position of certain companies in Silicon Valley (some of those you mentioned) because they absorbed an important amount of highly qualified labor paying astronomical salaries. In the end, the issue seems very complex and convenience is above making the law comply strictly.

@kynes said in The end of an Internet business model?:

I think in the movie "The Social Network" they said something like that if something on the internet is free, you are the product, and I think it is totally true. The advertising segmentation options that Meta offers are scary, it is a bargain for advertisers, but if you care about data privacy, it is quite scary.

That saying has gone from being a popular saying to a policy that these media do not hesitate to expose explicitly in their terms of use. How many sites say that if you want to protect your privacy by blocking cookies, you have to pay €1? There they make it clear: my data (I as a product), in that specific case, report a benefit of €1.

[quique]

@cobito said in The end of a business model on the Internet?:

The mierdification of the Internet

Curious, that's exactly the reason why I come back here after so many years.

The big sites, with their huge user traffic, end up attracting all the bad, from trolls to spam. In the end, it's exhausting to use those sites. No one knows the solution, but going back to smaller/closed, and specialized communities, and therefore easier to manage and with less background noise is something that is already starting to happen.

An example is the tilde servers (https://texto-plano.xyz/historia-tilde.html), although it is certainly a bit extreme

Anyway, my intention is to spend a little more time here, to see if I can keep it up

[krampak]

BLESSED BE MY EYES!!!! What a surprise to see you here @quique

[quique]

@krampak said in The end of an Internet business model?:

BENDITOS MIS OJOS!!!! What a surprise to see you around here @quique

HEYYY!!!

The years go by, but we're still geeks! I'm still working in IT, so even though I left this forum, I've always been involved in the scene, and I've kept seeing some veterans around here, or I've run into them in other places (physical or virtual).

The truth is that it makes me a little sad to see the forums (this one or others) being a shadow of what they were in the two thousands, but I suppose that to a certain extent it was inevitable. Now it seems that the problems of social networks are getting out of hand, and the reaction is a return to the small: https://uxdesign.cc/small-is-the-new-big-in-social-1f2c9ab4ab43
I suppose everything is cyclical.

By the way, I still have two Abit NF7 that were yours before Now they're part of my retrocomputing collection

Best regards.