I was consulting for an insurance company once. they even had examples of some of their employees to get insurance money for broken things, using their internal example pictures….
As a journalist once said to me, regarding a different topic (local politics in some city), something like: I wasn't surprised that bribes were happening; I was surprised that the bribes were so small.
Similar applies here: incredulous that, in various aspects of the tech industry, customers/users are often being sold out for such small amounts of money.
(Though manufacturing is easier to understand than a lot of software-only businesses, which aren't about cost engineering.)
It sort of makes sense. Like, I’m very bothered by this spyware-industrial system and put a high value on my privacy. But, objectively, I am extremely boring and seeing what I’m looking at is actually worth much less than $15.
It is actually really weird how popular this business model has become (I guess it is a thing because people don’t read the fine print). Invasion of privacy is, I think, extremely asymmetric, so the business model of spying on people is a huge destroyer of value.
A problem, as I understand it, is that if you let all the customers with high disposable income pay extra to avoid ads, you're left with a group of lower income customers who are less valuable to advertisers.
Manufacturers would rather get $15 for every TV than only $15 for some TVs. If they were to let you pay your way out, you'd have to pay significantly more in order to subsidize the people who won't pay.
- missed payments on interests
- failed positive guidance on going-concern
- missed intermediate milestones (b2b contracts basically give you any possibilities legally wise)
