I too dream of a world where we’ve moved on from capitalism to a socialist utopia like is in the United Federation of Planets, but we are not currently in that world. So until that time, we all have to earn a living to pay our landlords and feed ourselves.
For most things we are given a choice between ads or paying, and I almost always choose paying for no ads as I can’t stand them either. But until developers can live without bills and only do work for free because they enjoy it, our choice remains pay for no ads or be served ads. So I paid for no ads.
So I deleted the original comment because I found out that there was more to the Sync story than just advertising, and I realized that my comment wasn’t up to snuff. I didn’t mean to deceive anyone.
But until developers can live without bills and only do work for free because they enjoy it, our choice remains pay for no ads or be served ads.
That was exactly my point though: we do not have only two choices [(1) to pay for no ads and (2) to be served ads]. I listed some some alternative monetization schemes that don’t encourage consumerism. Namely, premium support for paying users, custom feature requests for users willing to pay the development cost, or luxury features that, while nice to have, aren’t necessary for the functioning of the app.
This point was probably in response to the section of the deleted comment where I argued that stuff that is done only for money probably shouldn’t happen at all. I stand by that. However, I do recognize the need for developers to eat. (I thought I said as much in the deleted comment.) For this reason, I use all sorts of software that I have paid for, and will continue to do so [2]. However, I will not pay a developer for their software if the functionality they’re selling me is “not having ads,” because ads shouldn’t exist.
I shouldn’t have to pay for my software not to kick me in the balls; similarly, I shouldn’t have have to pay for my software not to show me ads. Unlike being kicked in the balls [1], every waking moment of my life up until recently has been crammed with ads.
There are an infinite number of ways to make money that don’t require advertising, and I would be willing to pay for them in general [2]. Hell, I’ll be willing to donate for no reward [2]. I’m not against making money in an arbitrary way (at least under current conditions), but I most certainly oppose advertising as a specific way of making money.
[1] I’m not “into” that, but in case it isn’t clear, I would rather be kicked in the balls than see one more godforsaken advertisement. I cannot stress enough how much I hate advertising.
[2] …once I have a non-zero income.
Instead of seeing it as a charge to remove ads, maybe look at it as buying the ad free app from the dev? That’s how I see it. And giving people the option to use the app for free with ads is IMO a decent trade off.
maybe look at it as buying the ad free app from the dev?
I would rather just give the dev money for literally nothing if it allows everyone else an ad-free experience. Literally the second I get a non-zero income, I’ll begin donating to FOSS projects.
And giving people the option to use the app for free with ads is IMO a decent trade off.
I mean it’s a better tradeoff than “pay vs. be excluded”, but I don’t think people fully realize the tradeoff they’re making: time is a lot more valuable than money in my view. No matter how much money you throw at the problem, you will eventually run out of time and die. Your time is precious! If that’s the tradeoff you want to make then it would be wrong of me to stop you, but I really wish that people would stop and think “do I really want to spend my finite time on this miserable planet on this?”.
I’ve spent more than enough of my time being bored by advertisements, and even as I try to remove them from my life, people close to me insist that I waste my time on ads because they want to show me something but they were too lazy to install an adblocker. Ads are constantly being blasted from my parents’ and grandmother’s TV’s, they invade our computers, they even talk about ads at the dinner table. It breaks my heart.
I know that my anti-advertisement position is a bit extreme, but I feel like I have to push back against the constant intrusions of capitalism into our personal lives, advertising being the primary front of this battle. Of course I’m willing to agree to disagree, but I still feel it necessary to debate this.
You know you’re not paying for “no ads” right? You’re simply using an alternative payment method. If somebody can’t afford something you’re suggesting we exclude them? Make it paid for only? The ads serve as payment for those without the means or are just unwilling to pay and still get the same options as everyone else. For someone that hates capitalism you’re sure good at preaching it.
The ads serve as payment for those without the means or are just unwilling to pay and still get the same options as everyone else.
That’s an interesting perspective. The way I see it though, the cost you pay in advertising, besides program functionality, is time. No matter how much money Jeff Bezos gets, eventually he will die. Your time is precious. Advertising is a waste of time on an unfathomable scale. I think that most people don’t fully understand the tradeoff they’re making by giving their time to advertisements because we’ve been conditioned not to think critically about how we use our time. This allows capitalists to easily exploit people into doing tedious work for them, saving them time. A lot of people assume that there’s a whole life after the lights go out, and they’re wasting their time under the assumption that their time in the afterlife will be infinite.
If somebody can’t afford something you’re suggesting we exclude them?
Generally speaking, no. I brought up some specific examples of reasonable ways to monetize software:
-
Custom feature request: you can pay the development cost for a large custom feature that becomes available to everyone. For example, let’s say I’m using an office software on x86-64, and I want the developers to port a version for ARM64 and help me deploy it on hundreds of Raspberry Pi’s. They’re probably not going to do that for free. Maybe someone else will do it, but if I need to make it happen, I’m willing to pay someone for their time! Ordinary bug fixes and feature requests for free customers would still be honored.
-
Luxury features: for example, icon packs [1], custom colors [1], and extra fonts. For each item, this only includes those items which don’t affect accessibility and function; for example, it wouldn’t be cool to charge extra for a Sans-Serif font option, because Sans-Serif fonts are, generally speaking, easier for low-vision people to read. However, I don’t think there would be too much of an issue with charging for some Sans-Serif font as long a reasonable selection of them are installed for free [2]. The full functionality of the app should be available to all users, including and especially those who can’t afford to pay.
-
Premium support for paying users: some users are going to require more support than others. For example, let’s say I want to deploy an office software on 1000 computers, and I want to get constant support for my users to transition to the software. In the current economic system, it absolutely makes sense to charge for that as a service under the assumption that, if you need that level of support, you can probably afford to pay for the required development time and manpower to take on such a large project and still have time to assist other users.
Frankly, I think that people who cannot afford to pay for the software should simply get it for free. You shouldn’t have to pay in any way, cash or otherwise. The dev isn’t going to get a transaction if I can’t pay for it; might as well just give it away. If you don’t, I’m totally going to steal it anyways. Those who can pay probably should, and I will do so once I get a non-zero income.
However, if you’re going to sell anything, I think it is least damaging to sell only those parts that users do not need to use the program. You shouldn’t sell any part of the program if you can avoid it, but if you can’t, sell the unimportant stuff.
I suppose that if the choice is exclusively between paying with cash and paying by watching advertisements, and that choice is immutably carved into the fabric of the universe, then I suppose that it makes sense to have a choice [3]. However, it is my entire point that these are not the only options. One choice could be to not pay and just get it for free. This is the choice pirates will make, including myself. Another could be to pay some other way, or make some less damaging subset of the program be the item you pay for. Someone more creative than me could probably devise a more interesting business model.
For someone that hates capitalism you’re sure good at preaching it.
I appreciate critiques like these, but I will reiterate that I have absolutely no income at the moment, so I would be locked out of all the things I proposed. I’m not going to advocate for my own oppression. I’ve come up with those specific examples of monetization schemes as the least damaging I could think of.
[1] If I remember correctly, Reddit tried a scam where they made the default icon obviously ugly and then charged for the one people want. Additionally, I understand that color schemes can be important for accessibility purposes, for example in the case of color blindness. My point is that there should be a reasonable amount of icons and theming to accomodate all users. Beyond that, it is least damaging to charge for additional cosmetic changes.
[2] This is a feature I would be more likely to pay for because I’m really fucking picky about fonts. I’m low-vision myself, but as far as reading is concerned most of the traditional fonts work well enough; they just look kinda crappy.
[3] In situations where these are imposed to be the only options, I elect not to use it. I’ve lost out on a lot of opportunities because of my opposition to advertisements, and more broadly capitalism!
