[ESTheComposer]

If you're a HN-er you should know the culture of HN is very old school and fringe mentality. E.g:

- Flip phones are celebrated in some threads because people don't want smart phones (extreme minority in real life)

- Disabling JS and pushing sites to go back to just raw HTML CSS (with some even not understanding why we need JS, extreme minority irl. IRL site owners care about attracting customers and the things they want to do can't be done with raw HTML CSS much of the time)

- Kagi taking off. IRL most people still do and will continue to Google

- People acting like if ads were disabled forever the population would totally pay for things they like (IRL people don't, there's a reason piracy is big. People want the things they want for the cheapest cost possible)

HN is a very specific type of tech-centric bubble

[shiroiushi]

>IRL people don't, there's a reason piracy is big.

It is? That's not my observation. In fact, music piracy seems to be all but dead, thanks to the streaming services. Movie piracy is not, and seems to be increasing (hard to say though), because of people getting frustrated with the fragmentation of streaming; back in Netflix's heyday, it seemed like movie piracy was much smaller, because you could just pay $7/month to Netflix and watch whatever you wanted.

>People want the things they want for the cheapest cost possible

No, most people want convenience. That's why music piracy is basically dead. Piracy is usually a PITA, and it's easy to subscribe to Spotify or Apple Music and listen to everything you want. Piracy is usually a service problem, not an economics problem.

[johnnyanmac]

> Movie piracy is not, and seems to be increasing (hard to say though), because of people getting frustrated with the fragmentation of streaming

I feel that proves the point. When everything is all together for $20 people don't mind. when it's spread out, people are too lazy to sub/unsub to other $20 services as needed to watch content on demand. Someone that's a heavy enough power user to watch that much TV shouldn't mind paying $100+ to keep up. Premium cable was way more expensive and restrictive back in the day.

Meanwhile, all that conversation and none of these streaming services are even profitable. Because giving all your content away for rent isn't financially viable. But it's still too much for lazy consumers. So the entire thing collapses.

>No, most people want convenience. That's why music piracy is basically dead.

It's also why people completely raged when Netflix and GamePass increased prices. There definitely is a breaking point for many (past the ones who complain about every price hike on the internet but stay subscribed).

>Piracy is usually a service problem

Everytime I hear this, I simply need to point to the mobile industry to prove it wrong (or maybe right? Just not the way people think is "fair"). They fixed piracy by doing the classic Web dev action: Keep everything valuable on your server. The APK you pirate is worthless, as it is simply a thin client into their actual value.

We know how the rest ends from there.

[johnnyanmac]

in all fairness, I'm sure Kagi is aware it's serving a niche right now. It's more a matter if that niche (maybe a few thousand consistent subscibers?) can support their infrastructure. You don't need to compete with Google to make a good living.