I think that abrowne’s comment is certainly valid—and it gets at the crux of perhaps the best (only?) argument against experimentation with paid premium tiers: it’ll work. If these companies are raking in billions off of [choose your spin: up-selling/extorting] millions of Americans, there’s a likely insurmountable degree of institutional incentive and inertia towards maintaining the status quo as it relates to U.S. privacy protections, eliminating any hope of regulatory intervention to raise baseline protections for all Americans.
His/her comment also illuminates the most substantive tangible risk to a company that chooses to experiment with paid premium tiers—as alluded to above, the issue is highly sensitive to framing, and the program’s reception hinges substantially on how it’s presented and marketed from the outset. It would require only the slightest of ornamental alterations and no change whatsoever in substance to recolor the very same proposition as “a cynical extortion and profiteering scheme—and perverse defilement of the fundamental human right to privacy—intended only to line the coffers of America’s wealthiest corporations at the expense of its poorest and most vulnerable citizens.” Indeed, mental gymnastics aren’t necessary to achieve a cognitive dissonance of diametric proportions on this issue—a mere logical tiptoe will suffice to traverse the universe.
I’ve long been a proponent—as both a user and an advocate of these companies’ interests—of paid premium (ad-free, tracker-free, priority support) tiers for the “Internet essentials,” i.e., Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. There is, I believe, a surprisingly sizable (and rapidly growing) contingent of these platforms’ respective user bases willing to pay for privacy and user experience, and by insisting so stubbornly on maintaining a uniformly ad-subsidized model, without so much as even experimenting with subscription tier offerings, these companies are leaving billions of dollars a year in additional revenue on the table.
Perhaps the increasing cost of supply-side content will finally spur a rethinking of these platforms’ fundamental business models. Here’s hoping…
His/her comment also illuminates the most substantive tangible risk to a company that chooses to experiment with paid premium tiers—as alluded to above, the issue is highly sensitive to framing, and the program’s reception hinges substantially on how it’s presented and marketed from the outset. It would require only the slightest of ornamental alterations and no change whatsoever in substance to recolor the very same proposition as “a cynical extortion and profiteering scheme—and perverse defilement of the fundamental human right to privacy—intended only to line the coffers of America’s wealthiest corporations at the expense of its poorest and most vulnerable citizens.” Indeed, mental gymnastics aren’t necessary to achieve a cognitive dissonance of diametric proportions on this issue—a mere logical tiptoe will suffice to traverse the universe.