> I think this is just a natural consequence of structuring everything around engagement.

Agree - for me this leads to the conclusion that some services should not be run for-profit, or at least they should be run for public benefit. Similar to how governments in some countries own part of the railway.

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rusk 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I’m not against for profit so much as the monetisation of engagement. The web has always had a revenue problem. For a time this was solved by “advertising” and that was massively successful and what we see here is the result of that. There has historically been a reluctance to ask people for money - handling money brings a whole host of other unglamorous problems.

As we saw with Steam the last few weeks.

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Kye 4 days ago | parent [-]

The people who have always had trouble finding platforms and payment processors also always had trouble finding advertisers. Random demonetization on YouTube is a huge problem, for example.

	▲	jchw 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Porn, piracy and other questionable sites have always had a lot of fun when it comes to finding advertisers, but it does seem like it's gotten worse over time, encompassing many more sites. It also seems like whether an advertiser is concerned about where exactly their algorithmic ads appear is pretty inconsistent, too. What I think is interesting is that it seems like Japan is less affected by this. I know I've seen major Japanese companies advertising on sites like Pixiv and Misskey, which have both had some trouble with American payment processors. Heck, I'm pretty sure I've seen Ubiquiti ads when browsing Misskey. I guess the anglosphere Internet is somewhat impacted by the presence of more "puritan" influence than some other global packets of the Internet. Not 100% sure what to make of that.

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carlosjobim 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

HN threads usually have a comment demanding socialization and government control of whatever issue is discussed. Usually first or second comment. This time it took until the third comment for somebody to make the demand.

If you want government organized discussion, look no further than listening to the sessions of parliament.

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socalgal2 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Doesn't help - even those are heavily biased

	▲	a123b456c 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		User ownership could help, if users know what they want