#Pricing Models

[halloawhatisthis]

CBS Elementary + canon references • cases (part 4)

[men-worth-your-time]

Marshall Price

[atomic-chronoscaph]

A new boat! - Dian Parkinson, The Price is Right (1986)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Big Tech and “captive audience venues”

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in CHICAGO with PETER SAGAL next WEDNESDAY (Apr 2), and in BLOOMINGTON next FRIDAY (Apr 4). More tour dates here.

Enshittification is what you get when tech companies, run by the common-or-garden mediocre sociopaths who end up at the top of most businesses, are unshackled from any consequence for indulging their worst, greediest impulses:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/20/capitalist-unrealism/#praxis

The reason Facebook was once a nice place to hang out and talk with your friends and isn't anymore is that Mark Zuckerberg is no longer disciplined by competitors like Instagram (which he bought) nor by regulators (whom he captured), nor by interoperable tech like ad-blockers and alternative clients (which he uses IP law to destroy) nor by his own workforce (who have become disposable thanks to workforce supply catching up with demand). It used to be that Mark Zuckerberg couldn't really move the enshittification lever in the Facebook C-suite because these disciplining forces gummed it up. He had to worry about losing users, or about users installing alternative technology, or about regulators hitting him hard enough to hurt, or about workplace revolts. Now, he doesn't have to worry about these things, so he's indulging the impulses that he's had since the earliest days in his Harvard dorm, when he was a mere larval incel cooking up an online service to help him rate the fuckability of his female classmates.

When we had defenses, Mark Zuckerberg had to respect them. Now that we're defenseless, he's shameless. He's insatiable. He will devour us to the marrow.

When I'm explaining enshittification to normies, I often make comparisons to other places where you can't escape like airports and sports stadiums: "Facebook can afford to abuse you once they have you locked for the same reason that water costs $7/bottle on the other side of the airport TSA checkpoint." It's an extremely apt comparison, as you can verify for yourself by reading "Shakedown at the Snack Counter: The Case for Street Pricing," a new report from the Groundwork Collective:

https://groundworkcollaborative.org/work/street-pricing/

"Shakedown" makes the point that – as is the case with tech giants – sports stadiums and airports are creatures of vast public subsidy. If this seems counterintuitive, try Mariana Mazzucato's Entrepreneurial State, which lists all the ways in which the tech revolution represents a privatization of publicly funded research, as with the iPhone, whose semiconductors, internet connection, voice assistant technology, touchscreen and other components all count the public as a key investor:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/the-entrepreneurial-state-appl

And, as with airports and sports stadiums, the proprietors of the iPhone business are able to reap this gigantic public subsidy without taking on any public duties. Regulators that could impose some kind of public service obligations as quid pro quo for using public funds are AWOL, or worse, captured and complicit in the ongoing, publicly financed ripoff:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/15/private-law/#thirty-percent-vig

Airport, stadiums and tech platforms are all walled gardens – roach motels that are hard to escape once they've been entered. Thus the scorching prices of stadium and airport food, and the 30% transaction fees imposed by Apple and Google on app revenues (this is 1,000% higher than the average fees charged by the rest of the payment processing industry!), the 51% fees extracted by Google/Meta from advertisers and publishers (compare with the historical average of 15%), and the 45-51% that Amazon takes out of every dollar earned by its platform sellers. Once you're locked in, they can turn the screws, either by gouging buyers directly, or by gouging sellers, who pass those additional costs onto buyers.

Groundwork has a proposal to address this in physical settings: regulation. Specifically, a "street pricing" regulation that keeps the charges for food and drinks within these walled gardens to prices comparable to those on the outside. They note that these regulations enjoy wide, bipartisan support. 76% of Republicans support a regulation that can only be described as "price controls," two words that normally trigger head-explosions in the right.

How is it that such a commanding majority of Republicans can get behind government price controls? Simple: it's obvious that when a company no longer faces market discipline – when they're the only game in town (or on the other side of the TSA checkpoint) – that government discipline has to fill the vacuum, and if it doesn't, you will get mercilessly screwed.

This is where enshittification – a form of monopolistic decay unique to the tech sector – departs from everyday monopoly abuse in other sectors, like aviation and league sports. Tech has an in-built flexibility, the inescapable property of "interoperability" that comes standard with every digital system thanks to the universal nature of computers themselves.

Interoperable technologies let you hack Instagram to restore it to the state of privacy- and attention-respecting glory that made it a success in the first place:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/battery-vampire/#drained

They let you monitor Facebook's failures to uphold its own promises about not profiting from paid political disinformation:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/06/get-you-coming-and-going/#potemkin-research-program

They let you claw back control over how Facebook's feeds are constructed:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/08/unfollow-everything/#shut-the-zuck-up

They let Apple customers maintain their privacy, even if they have the temerity to be friends with Android users:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/07/blue-bubbles-for-all/#never-underestimate-the-determination-of-a-kid-who-is-time-rich-and-cash-poor

They let shoppers use Amazon to order from local mom-and-pop stores:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/10/view-a-sku/

They even let you destroy the net worth – and power – of Elon Musk:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/08/turnabout/#is-fair-play

Interoperability creates a unique, easily administered source of discipline over tech bosses that just isn't available as a means of countering the ripoffs we see elsewhere, including in sports stadiums and airports. That means that, far from being harder to fix than other disgusting scams in our society, tech is easier to fix. All that stands in the way is the IP laws that criminalize the kind of reverse-engineering work that allow the users of technology to have the final say over how the devices and services they rely on work:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

Those IP laws were spread around the world by the US Trade Representative, who insisted that every country that wanted to export its products to the US without punitive tariffs must pass laws protecting the rent-extracting scams of US tech giants. With those tariff promises now in tatters, there's never been a better time for the rest of the world to jettison those Big Tech-protecting laws:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/15/beauty-eh/#its-the-only-war-the-yankees-lost-except-for-vietnam-and-also-the-alamo-and-the-bay-of-ham

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/28/street-pricing/#sportball-analogies

Image: Daniel Brody (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:South-Station-snack-bar-1970.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[queenlua]

if i had a dollar for every time i saw incorrect (or at least badly confused) cybsersecurity advice on tumblr i stg ahge;ilahg

i probably don't have the bandwidth to properly beat back against the information environment & anyway you should probably trust me exactly as much as any other pseudononymous rando, e.g. zero

but if you are going to be listening to randos regardless: this old article on why you probably don't want to use a VPN service is right on the money & does suggest an Actual Alternative

[frizzyanya]

I've decided to rename the Game Changers books: (***spoilers ahead***)

1. Game Changer Scott Hunter and the Backstory for Ilya and Shane's Big Moment

2. Heated Rivalry Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander and the Most Beautiful Star Crossed Love of the Century

3. Tough Guy Ryan Price and the Third Act Breakup that's Singlehandedly Solved by Ilya Rozanov

4. Common Goal (I haven't read it but I assume) Eric Bennett and the Gay Bar that Ilya Rozanov Frequents With Sage Advice

5. Role Model Troy Barrett and the Weird Ensemble Cast Book That Forgets It's a Romance Novel Because Even IT Wants More Ilya Rozanov

6. The Long Game Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander's Hard Fought Happily Ever After

7. ???? Luca Haas and the Time that Ilya and Shane Finally Win a Stanley Cup Together (if that doesn't happen I will riot)

[on-a-lucky-tide]

I just think NikGhost, you know?

[styxxsyringe]

short on cash rn but don't know how much i'd sell these gals for (they're unrigged vtuber models)... 1st would defo be pricier as she's an original design and i don't think you'd be allowed to stream a miku model but idk exact prices

[whatudottu]

Something something this shit happened again, but yada yada I think it was vaguely understandable given what I've just done- my power supply figuratively exploded and i'm more impressed than freaked out because it's literally not even slightly warm???

Anyway- me and my VA friends have set up a modded Minecraft server with Figura on that list so I decided to up an model the Long Quiet as if I had any previous experience with 3D software, have this PSX styled gif since I'm now on my shitty ARM processor laptop finishing him off :P

Idk if this counts so it’s under a readmore rather than a tag but there’s eye contact below

My favourite thing about this gif is that he really looks like just a guy head on in dark backgrounds; ‘we’re just normal men’ type of goober I swear-

[tanked-up]

(The whole 141 in a living room, silent. Until someone opened their pretty little mouth and caused… a debate)

Soap on his phone, when he suddenly looks at Ghost: You know… I think you’d be a great model, Ghostie

(They all stare at Soap, who has a smile on his face and walks up to Ghost and shows him a picture of a male model)

Ghost: What is this…?

Soap: It looks like you, and he’s a model

Ghost: and… that make me a model?

Soap: If you put your mind into it

Ghost: I’m a killer, Soap. A fighter. I don’t “model”

Rudy decides to comment: I think you’d be a great model, Ghost.

Alejandro: I could be a model too, Rudy.

Rudy glares at Alejandro: I’m talking about Ghost

Alejandro: But I’m you Boyfr-

Rudy: Ghost could be my boyfriend too if I wanted

Soap: HELLO? I’m right here

Gaz: Oh come on! You guys aren’t anything

Ghost: We aren’t?

Soap: We could be

Price: CAN I NAP IN PEACE

Soap mumbles: Sorry grandpa

Price: I HEARD THAT

[nostalgic-retrosexual]

Diane Parkinson

[mewvore]

Any funny thoughts on the ps5 pro?

theres nothing funny about a crack smoking addiction and I sincerely hope the CEO and CFO of PlayStation get the help they need. My heart is with their families during this tumultuous time

[candy616]

I finally found almost perfect 3d printed figures of Soap, Ghost and Price! 😊🎉🎉🎉 And the best part, I can actually order them already printed🥰 yaaay ✨✨✨ I ordered Soap first, and if I'll be able to do a decent paint job (and won't die from it lol) I'll probably buy Ghost and Price too 🙈 I'll pick up my Soap tomorrow 🙈 Can't wait to start painting him 🙈

I wish there was a nice model of Phil though, but alas 😿😿😿

Someone, please make a 3D printable model of Graves🙏