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aimarketresearch · 2 months

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Mobile Money Market Size, Share, Trends, Global Demand, Growth and Opportunity Analysis

"Mobile Money Market report can be structured well with the blend of top attributes such as highest level of spirit, practical solutions, committed research and analysis, innovation, talent solutions, integrated approaches, most up-to-date technology and dedication. Further, strategic planning supports in improving and enhancing the products with respect to customer’s preferences and inclinations. The report comprises of all the market shares and approaches of the major competitors or the key players in the industry. Moreover, this market report also brings into the focus various strategies that have been used by other key players of the market or industry.

For the growth of business, Mobile Money Market report has a lot to offer and hence it plays a very important role in growth. It describes thorough study of current situation of the global market along with several market dynamics. Being a premium market research report, this business report works as an innovative solution for the businesses in today’s revolutionizing market place. This market report gives the best outcome because it is structured with a nice blend of advanced industry insights, practical solutions, talent solutions and latest technology. Mobile Money Market report takes into account plentiful aspects of the market analysis which many businesses demand.

Access Full 350 Pages PDF Report @

Data Bridge Market Research analyses that the global mobile money market which was USD 77.36 million in 2022, is expected to reach USD 1,753.48 million by 2030 and is expected to undergo a CAGR of 34.4% during the forecast period of 2023 to 2030. In 2022, BFSI is expected to dominate the industry vertical segment owing to rapid digital transformation within the sector. In addition to the market insights such as market value, growth rate, market segments, geographical coverage, market players, and market scenario, the market report curated by the Data Bridge Market Research team includes in-depth expert analysis, import/export analysis, pricing analysis, production consumption analysis, and pestle analysis.

The report provides insights on the following pointers:

Market Penetration: Comprehensive information on the product portfolios of the top players in the Mobile Money Market.

Product Development/Innovation: Detailed insights on the upcoming technologies, R&D activities, and product launches in the market.

Competitive Assessment: In-depth assessment of the market strategies, geographic and business segments of the leading players in the market.

Market Development: Comprehensive information about emerging markets. This report analyzes the market for various segments across geographies.

Market Diversification: Exhaustive information about new products, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments in the Mobile Money Market.

Table of Content:

Part 01: Executive Summary

Part 02: Scope of the Report

Part 03: Global Mobile Money Market Landscape

Part 04: Global Mobile Money Market Sizing

Part 05: Global Mobile Money Market Segmentation by Product

Part 06: Five Forces Analysis

Part 07: Customer Landscape

Part 08: Geographic Landscape

Part 09: Decision Framework

Part 10: Drivers and Challenges

Part 11: Market Trends

Part 12: Vendor Landscape

Part 13: Vendor Analysis

This study answers to the below key questions:

What are the key factors driving the Mobile Money Market?

What are the challenges to market growth?

Who are the key players in the Mobile Money Market?

What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key players?

Some of the major players operating in the global mobile money market are:

Vodafone Group (U.K.)

Fortumo (Estonia)

Mastercard (U.S.)

Comviva (India)

PayPal (U.S.)

Airtel India (India)

Fiserv, Inc. or its affiliates (U.S.)

Ingenico (France)

Orange (France)

Infobip Ltd (Croatia)

Centili Limited (U.K.)

Apple Inc (U.S.)

VeriFone, Inc. (U.S.)

Freecharge Payment Technologies Pvt Ltd (India)

FIS (U.S.)

Tata Teleservices Ltd. (India)

SAMSUNG (South Korea)

American Express Company (U.S.)

WePay Inc. (U.S.)

Browse Trending Reports:

Mobile Money Market

Geofencing Market

Micro And Nano Plc Market

Intelligent Building Automation Technologies Market

Security Inspection Market

About Data Bridge Market Research:

Data Bridge set forth itself as an unconventional and neoteric Market research and consulting firm with unparalleled level of resilience and integrated approaches. We are determined to unearth the best market opportunities and foster efficient information for your business to thrive in the market. Data Bridge endeavors to provide appropriate solutions to the complex business challenges and initiates an effortless decision-making process.

Data Bridge Market Research

US: +1 888 387 2818

UK: +44 208 089 1725

Hong Kong: +852 8192 7475

Email: [email protected] "

#Mobile Money Market Size #Global Demand #Growth and Opportunity Analysis #market report #market share #market size #market trends #market analysis #marketresearch #market research #markettrends #Mobile Money Market Share

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trendingreportz · 1 year

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#Mobile Money Market #Mobile Money Market Share #Mobile Money Market Size #Mobile Money Market Forecast #Mobile Money Market Report #Mobile Money Market Growth

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taazaofferss · 11 months

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markettrend24 · 2 years

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Mobile Money Market Growth, Overview with Detailed Analysis 2022-2028

The Mobile Money Market research report 2022-2030 provides an in-depth analysis of the changing trends, opportunities, and challenges influencing the growth over the next decade. The study includes a detailed summary of each market along with data related to demand, supply and distribution. The report examines Mobile Money market growth strategies adopted by leading manufacturers which include…

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#Covid-19 Impact Analysis #Mobile Money #Mobile Money forecast #Mobile Money Industry #Mobile Money Market #Mobile Money price #Mobile Money report #Mobile Money research #Mobile Money share #Mobile Money trends

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wayte01 · 2 years

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 month

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AI is a WMD

I'm in TARTU, ESTONIA! AI, copyright and creative workers' labor rights (TOMORROW, May 10, 8AM: Science Fiction Research Association talk, Institute of Foreign Languages and Cultures building, Lossi 3, lobby). A talk for hackers on seizing the means of computation (TOMORROW, May 10, 3PM, University of Tartu Delta Centre, Narva 18, room 1037).

Fun fact: "The Tragedy Of the Commons" is a hoax created by the white nationalist Garrett Hardin to justify stealing land from colonized people and moving it from collective ownership, "rescuing" it from the inevitable tragedy by putting it in the hands of a private owner, who will care for it properly, thanks to "rational self-interest":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/analytical-democratic-theory/#epistocratic-delusions

Get that? If control over a key resource is diffused among the people who rely on it, then (Garrett claims) those people will all behave like selfish assholes, overusing and undermaintaining the commons. It's only when we let someone own that commons and charge rent for its use that (Hardin says) we will get sound management.

By that logic, Google should be the internet's most competent and reliable manager. After all, the company used its access to the capital markets to buy control over the internet, spending billions every year to make sure that you never try a search-engine other than its own, thus guaranteeing it a 90% market share:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Google seems to think it's got the problem of deciding what we see on the internet licked. Otherwise, why would the company flush $80b down the toilet with a giant stock-buyback, and then do multiple waves of mass layoffs, from last year's 12,000 person bloodbath to this year's deep cuts to the company's "core teams"?

https://qz.com/google-is-laying-off-hundreds-as-it-moves-core-jobs-abr-1851449528

And yet, Google is overrun with scams and spam, which find their way to the very top of the first page of its search results:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

The entire internet is shaped by Google's decisions about what shows up on that first page of listings. When Google decided to prioritize shopping site results over informative discussions and other possible matches, the entire internet shifted its focus to producing affiliate-link-strewn "reviews" that would show up on Google's front door:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

This was catnip to the kind of sociopath who a) owns a hedge-fund and b) hates journalists for being pain-in-the-ass, stick-in-the-mud sticklers for "truth" and "facts" and other impediments to the care and maintenance of a functional reality-distortion field. These dickheads started buying up beloved news sites and converting them to spam-farms, filled with garbage "reviews" and other Google-pleasing, affiliate-fee-generating nonsense.

(These news-sites were vulnerable to acquisition in large part thanks to Google, whose dominance of ad-tech lets it cream 51 cents off every ad dollar and whose mobile OS monopoly lets it steal 30 cents off every in-app subscriber dollar):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

Now, the spam on these sites didn't write itself. Much to the chagrin of the tech/finance bros who bought up Sports Illustrated and other venerable news sites, they still needed to pay actual human writers to produce plausible word-salads. This was a waste of money that could be better spent on reverse-engineering Google's ranking algorithm and getting pride-of-place on search results pages:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

That's where AI comes in. Spicy autocomplete absolutely can't replace journalists. The planet-destroying, next-word-guessing programs from Openai and its competitors are incorrigible liars that require so much "supervision" that they cost more than they save in a newsroom:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/29/what-part-of-no/#dont-you-understand

But while a chatbot can't produce truthful and informative articles, it can produce bullshit – at unimaginable scale. Chatbots are the workers that hedge-fund wreckers dream of: tireless, uncomplaining, compliant and obedient producers of nonsense on demand.

That's why the capital class is so insatiably horny for chatbots. Chatbots aren't going to write Hollywood movies, but studio bosses hyperventilated at the prospect of a "writer" that would accept your brilliant idea and diligently turned it into a movie. You prompt an LLM in exactly the same way a studio exec gives writers notes. The difference is that the LLM won't roll its eyes and make sarcastic remarks about your brainwaves like "ET, but starring a dog, with a love plot in the second act and a big car-chase at the end":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/01/how-the-writers-guild-sunk-ais-ship/

Similarly, chatbots are a dream come true for a hedge fundie who ends up running a beloved news site, only to have to fight with their own writers to get the profitable nonsense produced at a scale and velocity that will guarantee a high Google ranking and millions in "passive income" from affiliate links.

One of the premier profitable nonsense companies is Advon, which helped usher in an era in which sites from Forbes to Money to USA Today create semi-secret "review" sites that are stuffed full of badly researched top-ten lists for products from air purifiers to cat beds:

https://housefresh.com/how-google-decimated-housefresh/

Advon swears that it only uses living humans to produce nonsense, and not AI. This isn't just wildly implausible, it's also belied by easily uncovered evidence, like its own employees' Linkedin profiles, which boast of using AI to create "content":

https://housefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Advon-AI-LinkedIn.jpg

It's not true. Advon uses AI to produce its nonsense, at scale. In an excellent, deeply reported piece for Futurism, Maggie Harrison Dupré brings proof that Advon replaced its miserable human nonsense-writers with tireless chatbots:

https://futurism.com/advon-ai-content

Dupré describes how Advon's ability to create botshit at scale contributed to the enshittification of clients from Yoga Journal to the LA Times, "Us Weekly" to the Miami Herald.

All of this is very timely, because this is the week that Google finally bestirred itself to commence downranking publishers who engage in "site reputation abuse" – creating these SEO-stuffed fake reviews with the help of third parties like Advon:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse

(Google's policy only forbids site reputation abuse with the help of third parties; if these publishers take their nonsense production in-house, Google may allow them to continue to dominate its search listings):

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies#site-reputation

There's a reason so many people believed Hardin's racist "Tragedy of the Commons" hoax. We have an intuitive understanding that commons are fragile. All it takes is one monster to start shitting in the well where the rest of us get our drinking water and we're all poisoned.

The financial markets love these monsters. Mark Zuckerberg's key insight was that he could make billions by assembling vast dossiers of compromising, sensitive personal information on half the world's population without their consent, but only if he kept his costs down by failing to safeguard that data and the systems for exploiting it. He's like a guy who figures out that if he accumulates enough oily rags, he can extract so much low-grade oil from them that he can grow rich, but only if he doesn't waste money on fire-suppression:

https://locusmag.com/2018/07/cory-doctorow-zucks-empire-of-oily-rags/

Now Zuckerberg and the wealthy, powerful monsters who seized control over our commons are getting a comeuppance. The weak countermeasures they created to maintain the minimum levels of quality to keep their platforms as viable, going concerns are being overwhelmed by AI. This was a totally foreseeable outcome: the history of the internet is a story of bad actors who upended the assumptions built into our security systems by automating their attacks, transforming an assault that wouldn't be economically viable into a global, high-speed crime wave:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/24/automation-is-magic/

But it is possible for a community to maintain a commons. This is something Hardin could have discovered by studying actual commons, instead of inventing imaginary histories in which commons turned tragic. As it happens, someone else did exactly that: Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom:

https://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/elinor-ostroms-8-principles-managing-commmons/

Ostrom described how commons can be wisely managed, over very long timescales, by communities that self-governed. Part of her work concerns how users of a commons must have the ability to exclude bad actors from their shared resources.

When that breaks down, commons can fail – because there's always someone who thinks it's fine to shit in the well rather than walk 100 yards to the outhouse.

Enshittification is the process by which control over the internet moved from self-governance by members of the commons to acts of wanton destruction committed by despicable, greedy assholes who shit in the well over and over again.

It's not just the spammers who take advantage of Google's lazy incompetence, either. Take "copyleft trolls," who post images using outdated Creative Commons licenses that allow them to terminate the CC license if a user makes minor errors in attributing the images they use:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/24/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator/

The first copyleft trolls were individuals, but these days, the racket is dominated by a company called Pixsy, which pretends to be a "rights protection" agency that helps photographers track down copyright infringers. In reality, the company is committed to helping copyleft trolls entrap innocent Creative Commons users into paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars to use images that are licensed for free use. Just as Advon upends the economics of spam and deception through automation, Pixsy has figured out how to send legal threats at scale, robolawyering demand letters that aren't signed by lawyers; the company refuses to say whether any lawyer ever reviews these threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/13/an-open-letter-to-pixsy-ceo-kain-jones-who-keeps-sending-me-legal-threats/

This is shitting in the well, at scale. It's an online WMD, designed to wipe out the commons. Creative Commons has allowed millions of creators to produce a commons with billions of works in it, and Pixsy exploits a minor error in the early versions of CC licenses to indiscriminately manufacture legal land-mines, wantonly blowing off innocent commons-users' legs and laughing all the way to the bank:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/02/commafuckers-versus-the-commons/

We can have an online commons, but only if it's run by and for its users. Google has shown us that any "benevolent dictator" who amasses power in the name of defending the open internet will eventually grow too big to care, and will allow our commons to be demolished by well-shitters:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

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/2024/05/09/shitting-in-the-well/#advon

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

Catherine Poh Huay Tan (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/68166820@N08/49729911222/

Laia Balagueró (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/lbalaguero/6551235503/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

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theambitiouswoman · 1 year

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How To Get Started Investing In The Stock Market

Educate yourself: Before investing in the stock market, it's important to educate yourself about the basics of investing, including the different types of investments, the risks involved, and how to build a diversified portfolio. There are many resources available, including books, online courses, and investment blogs.

Determine your investment goals: It's important to have clear investment goals before investing in the stock market. Are you investing for retirement, a down payment on a house, or to generate passive income? Your investment goals will help determine the types of investments that are appropriate for you.

Open a brokerage account: To invest in the stock market, you'll need to open a brokerage account with a reputable brokerage firm. Some popular options include Fidelity, TD Ameritrade, and Charles Schwab. When choosing a brokerage firm, consider factors such as fees, investment options, and customer service.

Build a diversified portfolio: Diversification is key to successful investing. By investing in a mix of stocks, bonds, and other assets, you can reduce your risk and increase your chances of long-term success. Consider investing in a mix of large-cap and small-cap stocks, domestic and international investments, and bonds with varying maturities.

Start investing: Once you have a brokerage account and have determined your investment strategy, it's time to start investing. Consider starting with a small amount of money and gradually increasing your investments over time.

WAYS TO INVEST

There are several ways to invest in the stock market, including:

Individual Stocks: This involves buying shares of individual companies on the stock market. You can buy shares through a broker or an online trading platform.

Mutual Funds: Mutual funds pool money from multiple investors and invest in a diversified portfolio of stocks. This allows you to invest in a variety of companies with a single investment.

Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs): ETFs are similar to mutual funds, but they trade like individual stocks on an exchange. This allows you to buy and sell ETFs throughout the trading day.

Index Funds: Index funds track the performance of a specific index, such as the S&P 500. This provides exposure to a broad range of companies and can be a good option for long-term investors.

TOOLS TO START INVESTING

Online Trading Platforms: Many brokers offer online trading platforms that allow you to buy and sell stocks and funds. These platforms typically provide research tools and stock charts to help you make informed investment decisions.

Robo-Advisors: Robo-advisors are digital platforms that use algorithms to create and manage investment portfolios for you. They can be a good option for beginner investors who want a hands-off approach.

Investment Apps: There are several investment apps available that allow you to buy and sell stocks and funds from your mobile device. These apps are often designed for beginner investors and offer low fees and user-friendly interfaces.

PLATFORMS

A few popular options:

Robinhood: Robinhood is a commission-free trading app that offers stocks, ETFs, and cryptocurrency trading. It’s designed for beginner investors and offers a user-friendly interface.

Acorns: Acorns is an investment app that automatically invests your spare change. It rounds up your purchases to the nearest dollar and invests the difference in a diversified portfolio of ETFs.

TD Ameritrade: TD Ameritrade is a popular trading platform that offers stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, options, futures, and forex trading. It offers a variety of trading tools and research resources.

ETRADE: ETRADE is a popular online broker that offers stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, options, and futures trading. It offers a variety of trading tools and resources, including a mobile app.

Fidelity: Fidelity is a full-service broker that offers stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, options, and futures trading. It offers a variety of investment tools and research resources, including a mobile app.

INVESTMENT STRATEGIES

Value Investing: Value investing involves buying stocks that are undervalued by the market and holding them for the long term. This approach requires patience and a thorough analysis of a company’s financial statements and growth potential.

Growth Investing: Growth investing involves buying stocks in companies that are expected to grow faster than the market average. This approach often involves investing in companies that are at the cutting edge of technology or have innovative business models.

Dividend Investing: Dividend investing involves buying stocks in companies that pay a dividend. This can provide a steady stream of income for investors and can be a good option for those looking for more conservative investments.

Passive Investing: Passive investing involves investing in a diversified portfolio of low-cost index funds or ETFs. This approach is designed to match the performance of the overall market and requires minimal effort on the part of the investor.

Real Estate Investing: Real estate investing involves buying and holding real estate assets for the purpose of generating income or appreciation. This can include investing in rental properties, real estate investment trusts (REITs), or crowdfunding platforms.

Options trading: is a type of trading strategy that involves buying and selling options contracts, which are financial instruments that give the holder the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell an underlying asset, such as stocks, at a specific price within a certain time frame. Options trading can be used to generate income, hedge against risk, or speculate on market movements.

Swing trading is a type of trading strategy that aims to capture short- to medium-term gains in a financial asset, such as stocks, currencies, or commodities. Swing traders typically hold their positions for a few days to several weeks, taking advantage of price swings or "swings" in the market. Swing traders use technical analysis to identify trends and patterns in the market, and they often employ a combination of charting tools and indicators to help them make trading decisions. They look for stocks or other assets that have a clear trend, either up or down, and then try to enter and exit positions at opportune times to capture profits.

TECHNICAL ANALYSIS TOOLS

There are many technical analysis resources available for traders to use in their analysis of financial markets. Here are some popular options:

TradingView: TradingView is a web-based charting and technical analysis platform that provides users with real-time data, customizable charts, and a variety of technical indicators and drawing tools.

StockCharts: StockCharts is another web-based platform that provides a wide range of technical analysis tools, including charting capabilities, technical indicators, and scanning tools to help traders identify potential trading opportunities.

Thinkorswim: Thinkorswim is a trading platform provided by TD Ameritrade that offers advanced charting and technical analysis tools, as well as a wide range of other features for traders, including paper trading, news and research, and risk management tools.

MetaTrader 4/5: MetaTrader is a popular trading platform used by many traders around the world. It provides a range of technical analysis tools, including customizable charts, indicators, and automated trading strategies.

Investing.com: Investing.com is a website that provides real-time quotes, charts, news, and analysis for a wide range of financial markets, including stocks, currencies, commodities, and cryptocurrencies.

Yahoo Finance: Yahoo Finance is a website that provides real-time stock quotes, news, and analysis, as well as customizable charts and a variety of other tools for traders and investors.

Finviz: is a popular web-based platform for traders and investors that provides a wide range of tools and information to help them analyze financial markets. The platform offers real-time quotes, customizable charts, news and analysis, and a variety of other features.

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absolutebl · 1 year

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BL Streaming - Which Service is Worth Your Money?

I’m bored and I have a little extra time this morning so it’s time for ABL to play with the spreadsheet of doom.

Occasionally I get the question:

If I were to subscribe to only one platform for BL which should I pick?

This post is dated May 2023.

First things first. I am going to be (somewhat) objective about this and not judge on quality of content. Because if KinnPorsche is all you love in life, obvs you need iQIYI, but if you are a HIStory franchise stan, than it’s all about Viki. Those are your life choices, I’m just here to play numbers games, okay?

Secondly, some shows air on multiple platforms, particularly Viki & Gaga, but sometimes it’s Gaga & YouTube, occasionally it’s even iQIYI + others. This has only started happening in the last few years. Bed Friend was on 3 different platforms (GaGa, iQIYI, YT) - even though it was originally announced for Viki! I honestly don’t know how to track this, so I tend to log the spreadsheet with my preferred watching platform for that language, this will throw the numbers off for those platforms.

Since I join everything my platform preference choice is based on:

the quality of the subs/captions

the quality of the user experience

My subs experience tends to be:

YT = best for Thai

Viki = best for Korean and sometimes Japanese, okay for Thai

Gaga = best for Chinese and sometimes Japanese but very weak Thai subs

My user interface preference is:

YT, Viki, Gaga in that order then everyone else with iQIYI at the bottom. This is because I watch on mobile devices.

ASplay, WeTV, former Line, Amarin TV, Netflix and the other smaller suppliers (and apps) will all be grouped together for this assessment. Since they have so few offerings, by default I would not recommend subbing those platforms unless you are a hard stan of all BL with disposable income.

Super bad BLs that I watched back in the day on grey sites or YT (pre 2020 crack down) because there were no other options and I am a completest are still listed as grey. I would never suggest anyone watch these shows anyway, so I don’t care if they have now shown up on legitimate sites. If they are somewhere, it’s likely Gaga. Which means Gaga’s percentage of the market share is probably UNDER reported by my numbers.

Movies and cinema-only releases that never got international distribution fall into the “grey” category. If I got it off an indie subber, since that too is technically illegal, it falls into the grey category as well.

Final note: This is from a USA based IP, I don’t use a VPN, so platforms assessments are from that perspective.

Spring 2023, current state of the spreadsheet. AKA

Our BL Data Set

Total # of BLs = 564

# of BLs ongoing (so finished runtime is best guess) = 18

Just Answer the Damn Question

Round Number of Actual BLs - % of market share

YouTube = 218 - 38.6%

Gaga = 148 - 26.2%

Viki = 77 - 13.7%

Grey = 53 - 9.4%

BLs I’ve never been able to find on any platform (including grey): 36 - 6.4%

iQIYI = 14 - 2.5%

Other platforms = 12 - 2.2%

Margin of error: +- 1% (look I’m just not driven to be that accurate here)

Subscription Platforms Breakdown - % of market share

Eliminating YouTube, Grey, and missing BLs. Viki is included because I do not know which of theirs are behind the paywall and which are not.

Total subscribe-only BLs: 257

Gaga = 59%

Viki = 30%

iQIYI = 6%

Sml sites/apps = 5%

(rounded)

Okay but how about actual runtime?

Gaga = 360 hrs - 44%

Viki = 311 hrs - 38%

iQIYI = 98 hrs - 12%

Sml sites = 50 hrs - 6%

Anyway you cut it... on pure BL standards...

GAGAOOLALA WINS

Other consideration? In most places Gaga is ALSO the cheapest per month option.

Final Thoughts

YouTube (America’s Alphabet)

YT has the most pieces of content and longest overall runtime because of all the Thai stuff. ALSO bootlegs show up there, especially the early Chinese and Japanese stuff. They will often get taken down and you have to hunt for it again. YT takedowns come in waves, every 6 months or so.

However, GMMTV, some Star Hunter, some Studio Wabi Sabi, all the Vietnamese & Pinoy stuff (until now), and a few choice bits of Strongberry are YT content.

YT’s app is the best UX of a poor set (for me), but the web based YT at Premium level doesn’t work with Firefox. I use YT for work A LOT, so the fee for Premium ($13.99) and lack of ads + downloads (travel) is worth it for me, but I think it probubly isn’t if you’re on a budget.

GaGaOOLaLa (Taiwan’s Portico Media)

Of the pay to play platforms, GaGa dominates with the most BLs by all metrics. If you’re intersted in darker BL, GL and other queer content, very high heat, the history of the genre, or Japanese stuff - most of that is on GaGa. Also all of Strongberry and some of the newer queerer series (like My Ride).

At $6.99 a month it’s ALSO one of the cheapest options.

Gaga is based out of Taiwan, the only Asian country with marriage equality (as of 2022) AND it specializes in exclusively queer content so they need our support. If you can afford them, you should support them. GaGa is the only platform that will always have more BL, guaranteed (so long as Taiwan is autonomous). Ironically, you can follow their YT channel for previews and teasers to their latest series, short content, and acquisitions.

Their app isn’t great, but their web-based interface is fine. That said: there’s no categories (way to organize), and the way they roll out new episodes is unintuitive. Their mobile app ALWAYS pauses not mater what you actually want it to do and the lack of the quick skip ahead is frustrating.

Viki (Japan’s Rakutan)

Viki specializes in longer series, mostly Thai, Taiwanese, and a few of the Chinese bromances. It also now has a lot of KBLs. But in general only more recent stuff (2018 is as far back as they go).

At $4.99-$11.99 depending, it’s low to average cost. I’m not sure which one (if any) you actually need for BL. Most of my favorite new shows tend to air on Viki, and I like Rakutan as a parent company, so I don’t mind supporting them.

They happen to have 5 of my top ten BLs, which is A LOT (since I hand out 10/10 so rarely). So for me they host the objective best BL content.

They have the second best app (after YT, it’s kinda a combo of YT + Netflix) but the lack of a speed-up option is frustrating for many. Also the desktop version is super buggy. But they DO have categories you can name and control, which I love.

Other Platforms

iQIYI - is Mainland China based (hello Baidu, you ugly fucker), so the platform getting/pimping BL for an international audience only is… how do I put this?… oh yeah: shitty. I will often rename it Icky, for this reason. It clearly wants to break the market, but… do we want it in the market at all? How long will they host BLs? When will they be shut down and censored? I would say it’s only worth it if you really also like Chinese dramas. And even so, Viki also has A LOT of those. Unfortunately for us, Wabi Sabi seems to have cut a distribution deal with Icky. And, of course, there is the KinnPorsche situation (so ironic that Icky hosts the highest heat). The interface is a nightmare. They have the WORST app, even when you pay, it serves ads, some of which alpha crash the platform.

Netflix - here in the states it almost never has new BL content. Sometimes some old stuff. They tested the waters with SOTUS and Love Sick. I have a feeling they aren’t particularly intersted in this market. So if BL is what you watch, don’t bother. At last check they still had Gameboys and Your Name Engraved Herein and Wish You.

WeTV - acts like LineTV used to, has Manner of Death and We Best Love and a few of the more obscure Thai pulps. But probably not worth it for anyone but a completest.

Grey - Unknown or No Distributor

Indie subbers: there’s some BLs that you can watch by supporting indie subbers who supply private links to their personal versions. This is not legal, but it is a slightly nicer way to get stuff you can’t find anywhere else. I’ve done this for some Thai and Japanese stuff.

I find the leads for these sources here on Tumblr. If someone is giffing and talking about a show and I don’t know how they are getting hold of it, I simply ask.

DramaCool (USA) & Dailymotion (France) & Bilibili (China) and others - AKA the grey space. You SHOULD feel guilty using these sites, you’re stealing, but it’s where many of us go for BL we can’t find anywhere else (in defiance of what few morals we have left). These are BLs that originally sold to very odd platforms or never got international distribution. Unfortunately, some of my favorites are in this category like Great Men Academy or Seven Days. It’s a nightmare. The ads are terrible and the virus/bug risk is high. They get taken down all the time. Or the leads are faked. I use an old computer to access and suggest you take all necessary precautions yourself.

P’ABL SOAP BOX TIME

Look I work tangential to the entertainment industry, so if you thought I wasn’t going to learn you a little on this subject, you got another think coming.

HERE’S THE THING:

You watch a show on one of the grey platforms, ESPECIALLY if it actually has distribution on Gaga or Viki - you better review that shit. You spread the word and advocate for that content here, on MDL, on social media, with fan art, I don’t care. You steal it, you find a way to pay back in your time and/or creativity.

I get it if you’re poor, but don’t be a goddamn scab. Find a way to reward content creators with non-monetary support. If you had the time to watch the thing you stole, you have time to pay it forward in some substantial way. Do this even if you didn’t steal it but got it for free. Do this if you read fanfic. Do this with articles, blogs, books. Do this with podcasts.

It isn’t hard to be a decent human and support creators. Don’t you dare just TAKE. If you’re that kind of person stop reading this blog immediately. I don’t want anything to do with you and you don’t deserve my words or my spreadsheet of Doom.

/rant

MORE ON THIS TOPIC WITH FOLLOW UP QUESTIONS

Original post on this subject that I adapted for this post.

(source)

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adbros · 9 months

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30 ways to make real; money from home

Making money online from the comfort of your home has become increasingly accessible with the growth of the internet and digital technologies. In 2023, there are numerous realistic ways to earn money online. Here are 30 ideas to get you started:

1. Freelance Writing: Offer your writing skills on platforms like Upwork or Freelancer to create blog posts, articles, or website content.

2. Content Creation: Start a YouTube channel, podcast, or blog to share your expertise or passion and monetize through ads, sponsorships, and affiliate marketing.

3. Online Surveys and Market Research: Participate in online surveys and market research studies with platforms like Swagbucks or Survey Junkie.

4. Remote Customer Service: Work as a remote customer service representative for companies like Amazon or Apple.

5. Online Tutoring: Teach subjects you're knowledgeable in on platforms like VIPKid or Chegg Tutors.

6. E-commerce: Start an online store using platforms like Shopify, Etsy, or eBay to sell products.

7. Affiliate Marketing: Promote products or services on your blog or social media and earn commissions for sales made through your referral links.

8. Online Courses: Create and sell online courses on platforms like Udemy or Teachable.

9. Remote Data Entry: Find remote data entry jobs on websites like Clickworker or Remote.co.

10. Virtual Assistance: Offer administrative support services to businesses as a virtual assistant.

11. Graphic Design: Use your graphic design skills to create logos, graphics, or websites for clients on platforms like Fiverr.

12. Stock Photography: Sell your photos on stock photography websites like Shutterstock or Adobe Stock.

13. App Development: Develop and sell mobile apps or offer app development services.

14. Social Media Management: Manage social media accounts for businesses looking to enhance their online presence.

15. Dropshipping: Start an e-commerce business without holding inventory by dropshipping products.

16. Online Consultations: Offer consulting services in your area of expertise through video calls.

17. Online Surplus Sales: Sell unused items or collectibles on platforms like eBay or Facebook Marketplace.

18. Online Fitness Coaching: Become an online fitness coach and offer workout plans and guidance.

19. Virtual Events: Host webinars, workshops, or conferences on topics you're knowledgeable about.

20. Podcast Production: Offer podcast editing, production, or consulting services.

21. Remote Transcription: Transcribe audio and video files for clients.

22. Online Translation: Offer translation services if you're proficient in multiple languages.

23. Affiliate Blogging: Create a niche blog with affiliate marketing as the primary revenue source.

24. Online Art Sales: Sell your artwork, crafts, or digital art on platforms like Etsy or Redbubble.

25. Remote Bookkeeping: Offer bookkeeping services for small businesses from home.

26. Digital Marketing: Provide digital marketing services like SEO, PPC, or social media management.

27. Online Gaming: Stream your gaming sessions on platforms like Twitch and monetize through ads and donations.

28. Virtual Assistant Coaching: If you have experience as a VA, offer coaching services to aspiring virtual assistants.

29. Online Research: Conduct research for businesses or individuals in need of specific information.

30. Online Real Estate: Invest in virtual real estate, such as domain names or digital properties, and sell them for a profit.

Remember that success in making money online often requires dedication, patience, and the ability to adapt to changing trends. It's essential to research and choose the opportunities that align with your skills, interests, and long-term goals.

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blueberrypancakesworld · 1 month

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Good Boy...Elijah

Elijah Kamski x wife!reader

warning : +18, smut, oral fem, collar, fake dogs ears (is that a thing?), ,,tighter’ outfits for elijah, praise kink

Summary : After a phone call from Elijah and a meeting place that wasn't the shared property outside of town, the pink neon lights shine down on her as she makes a special discovery at the Eden Club…a new anrdoid model comming from personal experience.

Info : I got the motivational bust of the century after this wonderful POST from @thatsthewrongwallcraig and puppyboy Elijah is now a thing ;) Have fun reading

cover from me (proud of this one ngl)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Detroid, a city of millions full of human and machine inhabitants. A major city in Michigan, a city that became world famous after Elijah Kamski, the inventor of androids, the next life of evolution, the father or god.

He was a man who was initially seen as a nerd with long hair, a thick beard and square glasses, but this was several years ago and he was rarely seen at global events or at the annual Cyberlife Expo when new models and gadgets were presented...and until now he had always caused a surprise at the convention.

But the call on her mobile phone just as she was about to put the coffee to her lips was just such a surprise. Turning her attention from the projections showing her new romance novel, a pleased expression came to her lips.

,,What's new Nerdy?’ she asked, smirking at the nickname she had given him and even if he didn't admit it, his suppressed grin said a lot. ,,I'll send you an address, I've got the new android ready...and please hurry darling it's a bit awkward“ she heard his reply quieter not normally loud and in the background she could hear music but it was too quiet for the radio or an open place like a concert.

Above all, Elijah was not a person who appreciated publicity, so where was he? Just as she was about to ask if he was in the Cyberlife headquarters, he hung up and she saw his location pop up a few seconds later.

Why are you in the city? And then in the district? she asked herself, packing up her things before heading out the door to the dark car a few minutes later. Transferring the instructions and location to the car, it drove off on its own while she wrote him a few more messages, which he didn't even read.

The drive from her studio didn't lead to their shared house, neither to the main quarter, nor to the rich neighbourhood where he occasionally hosted small events...instead it led to her surprise.

It was a surprise to arrive in the late afternoon in front of the open Eden Club, whose bright pink colours barely stood out during the day. Leaving the car parked, she got out a few moments later and made her way across the street towards the establishment.

She knew the club everyone knew the club a discreet place for a lot and a little money a place for an android or the whole place everything was just for the short stay. You brought out models like this several years ago, why a new one? she asked herself, not quite knowing why he had built and developed a new sex android.

The models three years ago with improved extras and even better memory loss were more than good, so what could he have now? Going in through the sliding door past the Andorids in the glass tube-like boxes.

She knew the models she had designed with Elijah, nice looking and someone you'd enjoy spending the night with...or just a few hours with before you had to return to the unpleasant reality.

Ignoring the speakers and dancing androids, she looked around her, vaguely remembering the opening of the club as she stood next to her husband, a smile and champagne as they cut the ribbon and the pinkish colours of the club came on...that night was one she felt the next day and so did he.

,,Miss. Kamski how nice that you are here ehm your husband is in room sixty-nine he has something for you’ she heard a voice she had heard before the owner a sleazy man who knew something about marketing the brothel. ,,Thank you the new android model will be good for you too thank you“ she said faster than necessary and moved towards the room seeing in the reflection of the glass that the man retreated to his office-it was better that way she only liked him to a limited extent.

Looking around one last time, the door opened as she put her hand on it and Elijah granted her access as well. Stepping inside, a bluish pink light seemed to transform the room almost like water. She recognised the music but was surprised to see only a switched-off android model standing in front of the small table that was the least illuminated by the light, on which, as far as she could tell, were two glasses of champagne.

,,Elijah? Are you there?" she asked just loud enough to be heard in the room, which was the most expensive and had a small extra area as far as she could remember, a room with extra toys and clothes. ,,Darling, would you do me a favour and close your eyes, I'd like to try something,’ she heard his voice and realised he must be in the extra room, his voice slightly muffled by the extra door.

At first she hesitated and almost wanted to laugh the situation was almost obstruse the couple from Detroid in a brothel with androids and she should close her eyes. ,,All right... but don't scare me,’ she warned and closed her eyes, seeing in the dark the dim lights that were still switched on, she heard the door open and muffled footsteps on the carpet floor with the silver ornaments.

She almost flinched when she suddenly felt his hand on hers, ,,Don't look at me darling...so nervous?’ he asked and she could just see the sly smile on his lip in her mind's eye.

She was about to say something when she felt the gentle kiss he gave her, something he only did when he wanted to apologise. ,,Apology accepted,’ she told him and felt the gentle squeeze on her hand as he signalled that all this was probably necessary for his latest creation...or so she thought.

His hand gripping hers felt him move hers and she tried to slowly piece together the image in her head as she felt the latex material under her fingers.

A mock shocked ,,Elijah how inappropriate“ he released her hand and she slid her hand over the fabric feeling it was the latex top that was cut for the male androids covering the chest and leaving room for teasing which she promptly tried out. Moving her fingers slowly upwards over the lower part, she felt his nipples underneath, which she ran over with a light pressure.

She took in his amused grin when he didn't do anything and let her do it, eliciting an excited sigh from him as she was almost kissing over the tight fabric. He let a restrained ,,D-Darling’ escape and let her continue for a moment before he almost shakily took her hand again, ,,Don't want to end all the fun just yet,“ he said and this time pulled her into a more intimate kiss, but she didn't feel his hands on her as if he was voluntarily holding back.

As if he was getting at something specific, but what? Slowly withdrawing from the kiss, she let her hand wander further down Elijah didn't seem to mind either.

She seemed to sense his anticipation, which was emphasised by his half-hardness. ,,It's all because of you," he assured her, exhaling almost shakily in anticipation as she stroked his bulge, holding it out for a moment until suddenly her hand was on something soft.

Wondering, she paused and groped slightly in front of her, noticing the texture of hair and something soft...like fur. She opened her eyes and saw Elijah kneeling in front of her, his black hair covered with a pair of dog ears made of black and white fur.

His upper body was crowned by the tight latex top and the tight pants spoke for themselves. But the thing that brought warmth to her cheeks, apart from the cute-looking ears, was the leather collar around his neck.

,,HR500 activate yourself,“ he said and she saw the android open its eyes and the light flickered from yellow to blue and she now saw the special feature. ,,Dog ears and optionally cat ears in various designs, plus a collar and a few extra things,’ he introduced and made an inviting gesture towards the new android.

Letting her hand wander over Elijah's new ears in praise, she walked towards the human-like technology that was waiting for her orders.

She ran her hands curiously over the dog ears in all grey and almost heard a sigh from the android who seemed to have changed. ,,He has different variations from submissive to dominant depending on your preference and all the new compunents are extra sensitive," Elijah explained as he watched his wife take care of the new android.

She pulled on the collar and the man immediately got down on his knees and looked at her expectantly, his cheeks slightly flushed and impressed by the sexual glamour in the machine's eyes.

,,You've outdone yourself again...and I suppose programmed from personal experience,“ she said with a grin and stroked the android's cheek as he cuddled up to her and seemed to beg for more. In the reflection of the wall, she sensed that her husband also wanted the attention he was getting.

,,Very personal experience, fantasies and your own neediness,’ she added and a smile came to her lips as she pulled away slightly from the android and an idea occurred to her. ,,Undress me honey,“ she ordered and saw Elijah about to stand up, but she stopped him with a wave of her hand.

The android nodded, ,,As you wish miss,“ he replied and little by little the clothes were removed from her body until the skilful fingers opened her bra and she told him to stop.

,,A good boy learns to wait, Elijah,“ she surmised and gave the HR500 a rewarding kiss, which he returned, much to the chagrin of her husband, whose hands held on to the floor to keep from touching himself.

Before she let go of the Andoirdne and disappeared into the small extra room. After searching for the object and giving an ,,Eyes closed darling’, she came back into the room, saw that he had heard her and stood in front of him again.

The click was heard as she attached the matching leather leash to the silver hook on the ring that was on the collar. Giving him a little more of the leash she sat down on the bed and slid a little towards the headboard before pulling on the leash.

Elijah looked at her almost joyfully and crawled onto the bed with her. She saw in his blue eyes how he looked at her, like a sculpture, a painting, an invention, a being he cherished since they were together, he always looked at her as if she was the most precious thing on this planet.

The same sexual lustful glamour that was in the android's eyes was also in the eyes of her husband, who only came crawling towards her when she pulled on the leash. ,,Good boy,“ she praised and stroked his soft furry ears before giving him some leash again and letting him make up for the day in one way or another.

He immediately took advantage of this and began to kiss his way up her legs, leaning back with pleasure as the soft cushions held him gently and invitingly and her hand, which was not on the lead, stroked his head and ears every now and then in praise.

,,I'm going to be a very good boy just for you,’ she heard his muffled comment as he stood just between her thighs, his fingers gently moving her legs slightly apart and his fingers roaming over her clothed centre. Her sigh of pleasure let him know he was doing a good job.

Not teasing her, not stalling, not luring her like he normally would in a normal night together. It was almost funny, a man who had brought about the new evolutionary stage rightly had a bit of a god complex and loved to take what he liked but if you looked closer he was to her her sweet Elijah was a man who wanted attention and love with a collar around his neck and cute soft dog ears on his head.

His kisses were cautious as he felt his way around, knowing what each other liked, but she liked his new way. ,,You're doing well...go on,“ she encouraged him, seeing the flash of pleasure on his face before he put his fingers to her underwear and slowly pulled the fabric from her body, letting it fall to the floor.

A tug on the leash, however, made him almost whimper as she didn't let him touch her yet and demanded another kiss.

A kiss in which she ran her hand over his body, taking advantage of the tight fabric and a gasp went round the room as she pinched his nipples lightly, the fabric only allowing a little movement and she saw his knuckles turn slightly white as he held on to the white bed linen. Moving down to his now hard cock she stroked it harder than before and his hips moved slightly trying to get more of the friction.

After a few moments, however, she pulled back and grasped his chin, ,,You're not a rude street dog, are you?“ she admonished and saw him shake his head hastily and quickly cuddle up to her hand, ,,No-no, I'm a good promise,“ he said and after she sought his gaze one last time, she released him and let him continue.

Leaving the leash on, he kissed his way down her body, nuzzling her breast for a moment before caressing the soft skin of her thighs.

Pushing them slightly apart and finally placing his fingers on her centre, she had rarely seen him so restrained, normally she would feel his hands on her hips and he would give her head until he had what he wanted.

A tantalising image of her hand going to his head and gently pressing down, ,,Don't make me wait any longer, will you?“ she said, and he complied immediately. She was already slightly wet and his tongue ran over her little bundle of nerves without any problems, he took it slowly but just enough so that it wasn't hesitant.

They both knew that he knew exactly how to react but in his new role he was the inexperienced poor boy. ,,Mhh that's good, go on,“ she encouraged him and dropped her head back into the kisser as he began to stroke her clitoris, the bundle of nerves next to him being caressed by his fingers. Before he used his other free hand and she felt him slowly insert first one and then two fingers into her.

It was nothing to compare with his dick, but that wasn't the point here, they both knew that. It was his restraint, his obedience, his taking of power to obey her commands and be her servant.

Something he could only rarely do here as she looked without him, her blue eyes dark from the little light, her lips reddish from the kiss and with a slight almost wet sheen from her wetness, her cheeks an almost dark red, he had never looked more beautiful and pathetic.

She stretched out towards him and got more of him, his movements slowly intensifying and accelerating. The sound of her moans and words of praise mingled with the squeaking wet noises that blended with the soft music and she sucked in her lip to make another excited sound as she thought of them being watched indirectly.

As the andrid still stood there watching her for an order, a sign or a gesture. But she liked it, she liked to be watched, to be desired by Elijah and everyone else, it was addictive.

A fact that not only struck her, but Elijah was also too lost in his rhythm, too attached to her body to give her his best while he took everything like a repentant dog rubbing against the bed. He licked and sucked what he could get his mistress to give him while the words of praise that left her lips seemed to be enough.

The moment dragged on, the climax approached and she felt her body tremble slightly, her back arching slightly. ,,Ah El-Elijah-good good boy,“ she moaned, her eyes closed in pleasure, her lips slightly open and her fingers pulling harder on his hair.

It only took a few more moments before her last loud moan went through the room and her body fell straight into the tangled sheets of the bed.

Releasing the leash slowly and convulsively, she pulled Elijah even closer to her, who lingered between her legs for a moment before pulling back with a satisfied sigh. ,,Thank you, darling, for this praising performance,“ she heard him say and felt his hand on her belly as he lay down next to her.

He gently stroked her body and played with a strand of hair as she slowly turned to him and took off his collar and lead. ,,You've been such a good boy," she praised and pulled him into a brief kiss that made him smile, ,,So the new android model is good,” he realised and smiled, which she did. She pulled the blanket over both their bodies and looked at the collar before throwing it in with her things.

,,The android will be a bestseller for everyone and the toys... aren't we just keeping them my good boy?“ she asked and laid her head on his chest and he stroked her and nodded in agreement.

,,Besides, you seem to have enjoyed the attention from our friend,“ he winked and pointed at the android, whereupon she felt the warmth rising on her cheeks and poked him lightly in the side.

,,You were kneeling in front of me with those ears and the collar and leash,“ she protested and flicked at the fur ears he was holding protectively, but she could still see his red cheeks. Before she felt him wrap his arms around her and hug her close, ,,Well, let's do it again,“ he said before pulling her into another kiss.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

#detroit become human #dbh #dbh elijah kamski #elijah kamski #elijah kamski x reader #neil newbon #detroid become human elijah kasmski x reader

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aimarketresearch · 3 months

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Mobile Money Market Size, Share, Trends, Demand, Growth and Competitive Analysis

Mobile Money Market report can be structured well with the blend of top attributes such as highest level of spirit, practical solutions, committed research and analysis, innovation, talent solutions, integrated approaches, most up-to-date technology and dedication. Further, strategic planning supports in improving and enhancing the products with respect to customer’s preferences and inclinations. The report comprises of all the market shares and approaches of the major competitors or the key players in the industry. Moreover, this market report also brings into the focus various strategies that have been used by other key players of the market or industry.

Access Full 350 Pages PDF Report @

The report provides insights on the following pointers:

Market Penetration: Comprehensive information on the product portfolios of the top players in the Mobile Money Market.

Product Development/Innovation: Detailed insights on the upcoming technologies, R&D activities, and product launches in the market.

Competitive Assessment: In-depth assessment of the market strategies, geographic and business segments of the leading players in the market.

Market Development: Comprehensive information about emerging markets. This report analyzes the market for various segments across geographies.

Market Diversification: Exhaustive information about new products, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments in the Mobile Money Market.

Table of Content:

Part 01: Executive Summary

Part 02: Scope of the Report

Part 03: Global Mobile Money Market Landscape

Part 04: Global Mobile Money Market Sizing

Part 05: Global Mobile Money Market Segmentation by Product

Part 06: Five Forces Analysis

Part 07: Customer Landscape

Part 08: Geographic Landscape

Part 09: Decision Framework

Part 10: Drivers and Challenges

Part 11: Market Trends

Part 12: Vendor Landscape

Part 13: Vendor Analysis

This study answers to the below key questions:

What are the key factors driving the Mobile Money Market?

What are the challenges to market growth?

Who are the key players in the Mobile Money Market?

What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key players?

Some of the major players operating in the global mobile money market are:

Vodafone Group (U.K.)

Fortumo (Estonia)

Mastercard (U.S.)

Comviva (India)

PayPal (U.S.)

Airtel India (India)

Fiserv, Inc. or its affiliates (U.S.)

Ingenico (France)

Orange (France)

Infobip Ltd (Croatia)

Centili Limited (U.K.)

Apple Inc (U.S.)

VeriFone, Inc. (U.S.)

Freecharge Payment Technologies Pvt Ltd (India)

FIS (U.S.)

Tata Teleservices Ltd. (India)

SAMSUNG (South Korea)

American Express Company (U.S.)

WePay Inc. (U.S.)

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pandorasword · 1 year

Text

I've got my eye on you

Chaeri as the 8th and youngest member of BTS.

「 From the column: How BTS take care of Chaeri, now and before 」

❒ member: Taehyung

❒ genre: Emotional

❒ words: 10k+

❒ summary: In which Chaeri realised that she missed the warmth of a hug more than she expected and that family may not always be a matter of blood

❒ notes: Bold and Italic at the same time indicates a sentence said in French.

❒ warnings: Mention of assault (Not described in detail)

「 Chaeri's Masterlist on my blog 」

Takes place not long before their debut | 2013

She once had a cellphone.

Before returning to Korea, her lifestyle could be described as more than wealthy. Her mother, a prima ballerina at the Paris Opera, never had to make compromises on how much money to spend and how much money to keep each month since she had pursued that career, and this benefited her children too. Chaeri always had a wardrobe full of the prettiest dresses, handbags from internationally renowned French designers, and the most professional pointes and tutus that could be found on the market. Because, of course, all those comforts she enjoyed came at a price: her dedication to ballet.

Her mother wanted, rather, demanded, her children to be as talented and successful as she was. To Dal, her brother, this came as easy as breathing.. He was the reincarnation of ballet. Chaeri, though, felt like she had to try harder than anyone else to be acceptable in her mother's eyes. Her life revolved around dance lessons, model walking, manners and everything that would make her perfect not only for her mother, but for everyone. The words 'In this family, we do not accept failures' were often repeated to her.

Being perfect is a heavy responsibility for everyone, but for a young girl a somewhat heavier one.

Fortunately, in her opinion, what made the days better was the time spent with her brother. The brother she loved deeply, admired and would have given her life for. She could have sworn the feelings were mutual but, apparently, he prioritised other things over her. Like everyone else. But of all the others, she didn't care, never had. What she had hang onto all those years was the bond she thought she shared with her brother. She should have hated him after the way he had turned his back on her not long ago; the disappointed angry eyes in which he judged her and called her a liar; the indifference he showed in letting her go back to Korea without even telling her that he was going to miss her; the way he failed to protect her.

Instead, there she was, on the floor of Big Hit's public relations office, now empty by hours, with a handset phone beside her, the stretched wire running all the way across half the room, from the plug to where she was sitting. With her back against a desk she hugged her knees to her chest, with the feeling that if she squeezed them tight enough her heart too would find a way to heal its cracks. She tried to call him at the Opera Institute in Paris, where he’d been studying and living for years after winning a scholarship - she tried that too but it hadn't gone the same way -, she tried calling him at home and on his mobile phone.

The first attempt ended with a not-so-convinced 'He's not here, I'll tell him you called' from his housemates.

The second attempt ended with her mother hanging up on her.

The third, the most painful, was hearing his voice clearly telling her that she should not call him again unless she had an apology to drop.

As if she had to apologise for what was done to her.

Her eyes were pinching, a bit from disappointment a bit from anger.

But she wasn't going to cry. She wasn't going to cry. She wasn't goin-

Her thoughts of self-conviction were interrupted by the creaking sound of the office door.

That door should definitely have been oiled, the noise was unbearable.

"Chaeri-ya, I thought you were staying to practice, I was going straight to the studio but then I noticed that the only lights on besides the security lights were on this floor. Are you... okay?"

It cannot be said that Chaeri was ever rude to her mates but, certainly, for the first few months she could be described as quite reserved. She preferred to be on her own at every good opportunity, to have casual conversations without getting too personal with them. Not shy, but private. Being shy was not compatible with her strong and decisive personality that she always showed and never hid. The main feature she was proudest of.

When she saw Taehyung at the entrance of the office where she had spent the last few hours, she quickly pressed her eyelids together to wipe away the veil of tears that threatened to spill out

'I'm fine, thank you. You didn't need to come looking for me." "I wanted to"

His kindness always left her speechless, would she have been able to act as coolly with someone who hardly considered her? Probably not. He moved closer until he was a few steps from her feet

"May I help you?" "To what?" "To get that sad look off your face." "No sad look, I'm just tired."

By that time she would have liked to be alone with her thoughts, to have the chance to process yet another rejection from her brother without having to pretend that nothing was wrong because she was in other's sight.

“Look, I know we don’t know each other well, but I’m still worried about you. No one deserves to face things alone'. We are going to be a family, we should act like one"

Family

Her mouth turned bitter as she heard the boy's sentence. It was everything she did not want: become a family with them. The only concept of family she had was the one imparted by her mother and brother, and she could well do without it at this point.

"In families there is no confiding, only pushing each other to do better and better."

Tae's face was confused "I don't know why you think that but family is exactly where you should open up. No one can help you better than it"

Chaeri's eyes fell on the phone left at her side. She tried to confide with her family but everything had fallen apart because of that. A lump rose in her throat that prevented her from speaking. Would she have been better off keeping quiet? Perhaps her brother would still have spoken to her if she just kept what had happened that day in dance class to herself. But it would have been so wrong to keep it hidden.

Taehyung sat down on the cold floor in front of her "Was your family the one you called on the phone?" he pointed with his chin at the device.

Chaeri nodded without looking at him.

"Sometimes calling your relatives is worse than not hearing from them, that makes the melancholy of home even heavier."

"It's even worse if the melancholy of having me home is not felt by them." Her voice broke almost in tears that could have burst out at any moment. She felt overwhelmed by all the negative emotions accumulated over those months.

"There's not a chance they don't miss you" "Oh, trust me. There's more than a chance" "Tell me about it" "What?" "Talk it out with me. I won't give you advices or my opinion if you don't want it but I'll be a good listener. I think you need to talk about whatever is haunting you."

She hated how she was unable to manage her emotions without them taking over. She looked up at the ceiling of the room, dotted with dark specks of damp. She began to count them one by one to keep control.

"There's nothing to talk about." "You think I didn't notice that you don't feel safe?"

She didn't realise how evident her discomfort was to others until the moment Taehyung pointed out the truth to her. They believed she did not feel safe with them. This, if possible, broke her heart even more. She had never thought for a single second that one of those seven kind boys she lived with could do to her what that monster had. Despite that, it seemed that her constant anxiety about finding him around the corner had led the boys to believe that she did not feel safe with them. She couldn't hold back the tears any longer. The black dots she had been looking at until a second before were now faded by the tears blurring her vision

"I'm sorry. You haven't done anything that ever led me to think I couldn't be safe."

Taehyung was reluctant to touch her to comfort her, although he craved to be able to wipe away her tears and caress her back.

"And I assure you that it will always stay this way, Chaeri-ya. We will never do anything to make you feel uncomfortable."

For long minutes, all that could be heard in the room were the girl's sobs and nothing else. Her heart was beating so fast that she could feel the pulse in her ears and throat. The calls on the phone and the conversation with Taehyung brought back memories of each moment that led her to leave France. It took an unmeasurable strength for her to regain control of her mind.

"I have been-"

She hadn't said those words since the day she told her mother. She remembered too well how she slapped her, threatening to do it again and again if she kept saying what to her mother were only lies.

Taehyung reached out a hand to hers, squeezing it. He wanted to give her strength

"I have been assaulted by my dance teacher, in Paris."

She told someone, and that made it all even more real. The monster, as she used to call him in her thoughts, had tried to convince her that she actually misunderstood everything, that she was exaggerating it to the point where she started to doubt herself and her state of mind. But he had not succeeded, neither he, nor her mother, nor her brother - who was deeply offended by what Chaeri was implying about the teacher who had taught them both how to dance for their whole lives - .

"And that doesn't make me think that all the people around me could hurt me. I know he was the damaged one but…" She had to pause to recompose her voice "But what hurts me is that my mother… my mother and my brother believed that I made everything up. They believed him and not me. They believe him and not me. So, Taehyung-ssi, tell me how should I want to refer to someone as family if family fails you so much?"

The guy's face became unreadable and the trauma she had gone through made her fear that he would not believe her either. She was about to get up and leave when she heard him speak

"Can I hug you?" She stayed quiet for few seconds "I didn't tell you these things to be pitied" "I don't want to do this to pity you at all. The reason is because I feel you have been denied this kind of touch for too long".

The girl felt a warmth in her chest, that typical feeling you get when you are understood, treated with kindness. She nodded without even thinking about it too much, because if she did she probably wouldn't have accepted.

He was behind her, wedging himself into the space between the desk and the girl's back, to wrap his arms around her in a backhug. He rested his cheek on her hair. His eyes were damp too, but he wouldn't let it show.

"I promise you that in our family no one will ever make you feel alone or misunderstood. Never will anyone let something so horrible happen to you again. And I, personally, swear that I will get an eye on you. Always"

She really wanted to believe in the words of the boy who was so gently trying to make her feel better. Could that be the good time when she would really find a family that cared about her? And when was the last time someone cuddled her?

She couldn't remember, yet she felt as if it had been a lifetime.

#bts 8th member #bts female member #taehyung imagines #bts imagines #taehyung scenarios #taehyung x reader #bts au #bts female addition #bts v #bts 8th member au #bts scenarios #kpop female member #kpop female oc #bts x reader #bts idol au #bts au fanfic

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that-left-turn · 1 month

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But they did pull the ratings with towl l+3 ratings matching those of the series finale (3m) while having the biggest streaming numbers thus far. Considering how AMC is back to their Sunday's main show having 300k live viewers and how instead of directly having repeats of ep4 of towl like they're usually doing they put an episode of DD to surf on towl's success, that says a lot. I love both pair of characters so i don't understand this need of bashing or undermining towl (smelly boots really?), just sounds bitter tbh. Danai/Andy and Richonne have been all over sm during the whole run making people who never watched the show subscribe to see them so I'm pretty sure AMC is figuring out a way to keep them around. At the end of the day one show's success benefit the whole twdu, cause more people decided to watch the other spinoffs after towl

This ask is in response to a parenthetical on my post, but I suppose I could explain my logic. First, though, I want to point out that the driving force of my argument was that all the characters are important and there's room for everybody. I wasn't bashing anyone and I have utmost respect for Danai. I said that Rick's fans who turned up for what they expected to be a rollicking action adventure were disappointed.

Now, to the points in the ask. TOWL had relative success. AMC is doing poorly over all and TOWL performing the strongest out of a bad slate doesn't make for objectively good numbers. The spinoffs are part of the same franchise, on the same network and these are not cheap shows to produce, so the studio needs to see a ROI on all of them. AMC doesn't make money unless curious and casual viewers keep watching the shows and they're positioned differently, so the expected viewership doesn't overlap beyond hardcore TWD fans who watch all the shows. That's a very small group.

It's very common ahead of releasing an important show (to the studio/network's bottom line) to buy engagement. The buzz you see about a show is often staged to create the appearance of success. More people will tune in if they think others are watching it. This is industry standard and not specific to TOWL. If a studio is worried that the numbers won't be strong enough to recoup costs, they will spend quite a bit of money to make it look like something is doing well.

A normal studio—AMC doesn't have the best track record for fiscally responsible decision making—doesn't try to find ways to keep expensive and reluctant actors on board a project that doesn't make money. Reluctant actors mean more money to make them sign. FX is always expensive, but genre shows in the scifi/fantasy space are more so. You have the whole spectrum from physical fabrication to digital effects on a TWDU show. It's a large crew, multiple units and it's a mobile production, i.e. one that shoots on location. Big cost. If live numbers can't get above 1M, the studio is definitely not seeing ROI.

That said, I'm happy Rick and Michonne's story arc got its long awaited closure and that Richonne fans enjoyed the show. (I'm not very romantic so the act of smelling someone's well-used footwear might be lost on me as an expression of love, but I do apologize if anyone with a shoe fetish felt disrespected by my turn of phrase. It was not my intention to offend anybody.) I don't feel bitter at all that fans got to watch a show they had anticipated or that they loved it. All TV shows should be satisfying to their audiences and I hope DC and TBOC provide the same level of joy to their fans.

Studios just have to make sure that the target audience is large enough for a healthy profit margin—that was the point I was getting at in my original post. AMC needs to capitalize on all their talent to grow their market share (which is ridiculously small). They can't afford to alienate potential customers by ignoring half their leads: casual viewers won't know who's in the shows and fans, who buy merchandise and are more inclined to open their wallets, will get offended by the snub of their personal favorite(s). That's bad for business and why there shouldn't be any "big 3" (or 4 or 5) posts made by official social media accounts.

All six lead characters are important for TWDU longevity and AMC's financial health. It's the one IP the studio actually owns, (everything else is under license or spaghetti thrown at the wall). The different characters appeal to their own segments of TWDU's potential audiences, so in any post that promotes the whole franchise, AMC and any relevant production companies can't create tiers or rankings if they want to optimize ROI. It looks unprofessional and it's discourteous to the talent, which shouldn't be the basis of any business relationship. After all, these people are the face of the operation, those who make the studio their money.

Thanks for the ask, anon 💝

#twdu franchise #amc marketing #production costs vs profits

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kyra45 · 7 months

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Mutual aid scams

This kind of scam is relatively easy to spot since it usually happens after you make a post asking for support from other users. Generally speaking, these scam accounts have no posts/no bio/no pfp or use a generic stolen stock image to look professional. This scam comes in three versions:

Check scam - The account asks if you do mobile deposits and them sends you a digital check. This check will bounce and you will not get the money. This is just a short explanation.

Bank scam - The account requests personal financial information such as your banking account transfer number and asks you to link your bank to their account. They are not sending you money they just want to take yours when your not looking.

GoFundMe booster - These accounts claim to be officially affiliated with GoFundMe and also claim their Digital Marketers who can help you boost your current campaign or make a new one. However, you do not need to pay someone $70 to boost your fundraiser and you can make your own for free.

This is just the basics of the scam, and I have other posts with better details. If you appreciate what I do, feel free to share this post of leave a top! You can also check out my pinned post for important links.

#scam #how to spot a scam blog #psa #important information #mutual aid #mutual aid scam

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sandinthepipes · 4 months

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Hello fellow dyslexic/adhd/others who would like to enjoy fanfics through their ears, I just spent the entire day testing android apps to find one that doesn’t suck as much.

TL;DR - these two T2S, Audify

I feel like I need to share this because 90% the apps don’t even allow a web page as a source, let alone get past the log in page, and I cant be the only one who doesn’t want to download every single fic.

“Oh, but doesn’t android have a built-in text-to-speech function in the accessibility settings?” I hear you ask. Yes, but it sucks ass very badly. Firstly it only reads in the system language, so it doesn’t really work. Second, you need to highlight all that you want it to read, and seeing that I read a minimum of 15k words in a sitting, I’m not gonna do that.

Also I’m broke, I imagine you are too, but even if I wasn’t I’m not paying for this, if I did I wouldn’t even be supporting a human being, so no.

I’ll immediately break your trust with the first point, but it’s what I’ve been doing until now, and now that I know what the android mobile experience is like, I feel the need to include this. The best solution I’ve had so far (which works wonders, let me tell you) is letting Siri read them on the iPad. It’s only doable when I’m at home and it’s still an apple product, so that’s why I began the research. However the positive points are INCREDIBLE so I’m going to ads it to the list because I said so.

First of all it’s built-in and SO EASY to access, you literally just swipe with two fingers and it stars to read. It reads the punctuation, you might think that’s a given and so did I, but no. A question sounds like a question, an exclamation point does why its supposed to do, short sentences sound what they’re supposed to sound like. In apparently all the apps ever created, you won’t find any of it, just flat, monotone voices with flat little pauses. Overall excellent experience 10/10.

Cons: it’s on apple, I consider apple the same as Disney, I would love to not give them more money so that they can make the market increasingly worse. Every now and then a system update will fuck with the tts function and it will be unusable for a while. Sometimes it doesn’t like the text format on some fics. It’s not portable.

Now that we got that out of the way let us get to the meet.

Speechify - it sucks bad. At least the free version, but seen as it costs almost 10€ a month I’m not even going to consider the premium version. Fuck that. You can’t increase the speed, and as somebody who hasn’t watched a single YouTube video on normal speed since they added the function I can’t do that, too slow, I forgot what we were talking about once we get to the end of the sentence. Also you can only use those weird very robotic voices, and they’re not even that many. Don’t recommend. I felt like I had to include it since it was one of the few who allowed browser navigation and well, it’s speechify. Also you can’t t have saved more than 3 “files” per time. Doesn’t have sleep mode.

Audify - works exactly the same as T2S, but it saves the history and has a bit more customisation for how it reads and what it reads (which you don’t really need for ao3, but if you wanted to read, say, Wikipedia with all the notes and stuff, now you know). Has the sleep mode. - EDIT: the double tap to start reading works slightly better than T2S on websites with weird formatting. But unlike T2S you can only have one tab open

T2S - cute. It works. Again, no emotions, but it reads what it has to, nice voice selections, easy to use. The premium version adds literally nothing, they’re a good app, what they have, they give. Also you can customise the interface colour if you want. Has the sleep mode. - EDIT: this app allows you to have multiple tabs open at the same time, unlike Audify.

That’s all folks. Now go and be free of your reading impediment, or be free in your multitasking, or whatever you want to do. I’m done, I’ve given my datas to all kinds of shady apps, I need to go do damage control

#fanfiction #fanfic #ao3 #dyslexia #dyslexic #adhd #texttospeech #text to speech #tts

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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How Amazon transformed the EU into a planned economy

Amazon is a perfect parable of enshittification, the process by which platforms first offer subsidies to end users until they’re locked in, then make life good for business customers at users’ expense, until they’re locked in, then claw back all the value they can for themselves, leaving just enough behind to keep the lock-in going.

In a new report for SOMO, Margarida Silva describes how the end-stage enshittification of Amazon is playing out in the EU, with Amazon repeating its US playbook of gouging the small businesses who have no choice but to use the platform in order to reach its locked-in customers, making European customers and European sellers poorer:

https://www.somo.nl/amazons-european-chokehold/

The mechanism for this isn’t a mystery. Amazon boasts about it! They call it their flywheel: first, customers are lured into the platform with low prices, especially through Prime, which requires pre-payment for a year’s shipping, which virtually guarantees that customers will start their shopping on Amazon. Because customers now start their buying on Amazon, sellers have to be there. The increased range of goods for sale on Amazon lures in more buyers, who lure in more sellers, with both sides holding each other hostage:

https://vimeo.com/739486256/00a0a7379a

This flywheel creates a vicious cycle, starving local retail so that customers can’t get what they need from brick-and-mortar shops, which funnels sellers into offering their goods for sale on Amazon. The less choice customers and sellers have about where they shop, the more Amazon can abuse both to pad its own bottom line.

There are 800,000 EU-based sellers on Amazon, and they have seen the junk-fees that Amazon charges them skyrocket, to the point where they have to raise prices or lose money on each sale. Amazon uses both tacit and explicit “Most Favored Nation” deals to hide these price-hikes. Under an MFN deal, sellers must not allow their goods to be sold at a lower price than Amazon’s — so when they raise prices to cover Amazon’s increasing fees, they raise them everywhere:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/

It’s not hard to understand why Amazon would raise its fees: the company has an effective e-commerce monopoly. Like Ozymandias, they have run out of worlds to conquer, and so their growth has to come from squeezing suppliers and/or raising prices, not from bringing in new customers. This is likewise true of mobile companies like Apple and Google, who have run out of people who are so excited about incremental mobile hardware gains that they’ll buy a new phone every year, which means that growth has to come from squeezing app vendors:

https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2023/06/09/Pixel-4-to-7

This is likewise true of the streaming companies, which is why Netflix is cracking down on “password sharing”:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/02/nonbinary-families/#red-envelopes

It’s true of the movie studios, which is why they want to zero out their wage bills by replacing writers with automatic plausible sentence generators that will write stupid movies that they think we’ll still pay to see because there won’t be anything else:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/06/people-are-not-disposable/#union-strong

It’s certainly true of Uber, which is why they’ve double the cost of a taxi ride and halved the wages they pay drivers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

Monopolies “grow” by making their customers and suppliers worse off. But they have to be careful about this: if it’s obvious that you’re using your market power to screw buyers, you can get in trouble with competition regulators. That’s because the only part of antitrust law that the neoliberal project left intact is “consumer welfare” — the idea that monopolies should only face enforcement when they raise prices and/or lower quality:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/10/play-fair/#bedoya

This focus on price-hikes has given monopolists a free hand to squeeze suppliers and workers, because a monopolist — from Walmart to Amazon — can claim that squeezing your workers and suppliers is necessary to enhancing consumer welfare. The less you pay to produce a product, the cheaper you can price it.

When a company has a lot of seller power, we call it a monopolist. When it has a lot of buying power, we call it a monopsonist. No one ever made a bestselling, family-destroying board game called “Monopsony” so most people haven’t heard of the concept. But monopsony is every bit as dangerous as monopoly, and monopsonists find it far easier to acquire market power than monopolists. Few suppliers can afford to have even 10% of their sales disappear overnight, so a buyer who accounts for 10% of your sales can demand deep discounts and other favorable terms.

Amazon is a monopolist, but it’s also a very powerful and ruthless monopsonist. For example, its audiobook division, Audible, has a 90+% market-share, and it used that market-power to steal at least $100m from audiobook creators, in a scandal dubbed Audiblegate:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/07/audible-exclusive/#audiblegate

For Europe’s 800k sellers who rely on Amazon to reach their customers, the monoposony conditions are blatant and shameless. Take listing fees: Amazon’s “flywheel” pitch claims that as the company grows, it achieves “economies of scale” that can lower its cost basis. But Amazon’s listing fees haven’t changed, even as the company experienced explosive growth in the EU (remember, sellers whose Amazon fees exceed their margins have to pass those fees onto buyers, and also raise their prices everywhere else to satisfy the Most Favored Nation requirement).

Amazon books the revenues from these fees — and other junk-fees it extracts from sellers — in Luxembourg, an EU member nation that provides a tax haven to multinational businesses that want to maintain the fiction that they operate their businesses out of the tiny kingdom. There is sharp competition in the EU to offer the most servile, corrupt environment for multinationals, and Luxembourg is a leader, along with Cyprus, Malta and, of course, Ireland:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

But at least listing fees haven’t gone up, unlike other fees, which have climbed sharply. Amazon falsely claimed that its additional revenues from fees were the result of growth by independent sellers, which Amazon pegged at 65%. Later, the company admitted that the true growth figure was 22%. Meanwhile, fees are up 85%.

The true growth figure might be lower still. Amazon refuses to show the math behind its growth figures, or even say which sellers and sales are included in the figure.

The SOMO report cites research by Juozas Kaziukėnas of the e-commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse, who finds that sellers are now giving 50% of their gross revenues to Amazon, an increase of 10% over the past five years across the whole EU. However, different EU (and ex-EU) countries have experienced much steeper increases in fees — in the UK, fees have nearly doubled (up 98%), and in France, fees more than doubled (up 115%).

Many of these increases come from the Fulfilment By Amazon (FBA) program, which is promoted as an optional service, but which is really obligatory — careful research shows that sellers who warehouse, pack and ship their own goods get banished to the depths of search results, even if they have ratings, costs and times that are competitive with FBA. This is especially true of the “buy box” that lands at the top of most searches. The company refuses to disclose how buy box positioning is determined, but 90% of products in the buy box pay for FBA.

Amazon has used excuseflation to hike its FBA prices, blaming higher energy prices for price hikes that predated the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and blaming covid for price hikes that predated the pandemic.

Italy’s competition authority did yeoman service in uncovering the sleaze of FBA, publishing an investigation that showed that Prime and buy box made the notionally “optional” FBA into a must-have for merchants, meaning that Amazon could jack up FBA prices without losing business.

Another notable source of gouging came in response to the UK and France adopting digital services taxes, which were meant to make up for the tax-base erosion enabled by Luxembourg’s flouting of EU tax law. Amazon passed these taxes straight through to its merchants, without seeing a comparable decrease in the number of sellers using its platforms — an unmistakable sign of market power. If you can raise prices without losing customers, then, by definition, your customers have nowhere else to go.

I’ve previously written about how Amazon’s $31b/year “advertising” market isn’t really advertising — rather, it’s a payola scheme that auctions off the top of a search-listing to the merchant with the most to spend:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

This is how you get a simple search like “cat beds” returning results whose first screen is 100% ads, and whose next five screens are 50% ads, many of them for dog products:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2022/amazon-shopping-ads/

Auctioning off search results means that every time you search for something you want, you have to wade through screen after screen of listings for products whose vendors spent more on advertising, leaving less to spend on making quality goods.

This is as true in the EU as it is in the USA. The SOMO report shows that European merchants are required to spend ever-larger sums to show up in results for the exact products they sell, leaving them with a choice between making less money, raising prices, or skimping on quality.

But even the “winners” of Amazon’s gladiatorial combat among vendors can still lose. Amazon uses an automated product removal process that can delete some or all of a merchant’s products, without warning or explanation, and no one at Amazon will explain what a merchant did wrong. That remains true even if a vendor pays for Amazon’s “marketplace consultant” service — ask these paid Virgils why you’ve been cast into Amazon’s pit, and they’ll shrug their shoulders (and bill you for it).

And even if you can navigate the junk fees, the Kafka-as-a-service removals, the war of all sellers against all sellers for search primacy…you still lose. Merchants told SOMO that a product that survives Amazon’s gauntlet is likely to be cloned by Amazon and sold as an Amazon Basic or other house-brand product. Amazon doesn’t charge itself 50% junk fees, so it can always underprice the vendors it knocks off, and give its own products permanent top-of-search placement.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once testified under oath before Congress that this doesn’t happen — and then refused to return to Congress when multiple vendors showed evidence that he’d lied:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/18/amazon-congress-letter-third-party-data/

He definitely lied:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-india-rigging/

Amazon has faced investigations and enforcement in the EU over this, and settled a claim with a promise to “not use non-public seller data to compete with sellers,” but given the company’s record of broken promises on this score and the difficulty of catching them cheating, it’s pretty naive to think they’ll stick to this.

The report quotes Thomas Höppner, a lawyer who has represented small businesses that Amazon screwed over. Höppner says the problem is that the EU evaluates Amazon’s bad deeds on a “case-by-case” basis, missing the big picture: “By the time one identified problem was seemingly solved, Amazon had long made amendments elsewhere with the same effect. We require a more holistic approach that considers the entire Amazon ecosystem and the various interdependencies within.”

But the EU’s enforcement approach is about to change significantly. The EU just passed the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which imposes a bunch of obligations on Amazon:

allowing sellers to offer their products on other marketplaces at different prices (Article 5.3),

not obliging business users to pay for one of its services in order to use its platform (Article 5.8),

limiting the way Amazon uses non-public seller data to compete with them (Article 6.2)

preventing Amazon from giving top billing in search results to its own products or sellers that have acquired extra Amazon services (Article 6.5)

The report concludes with a suite of recommendations for improving EU enforcement. First, they argue for a return to traditional competition law, abandoning the “consumer welfare standard” that is so friendly to monopsonies and their abuses of suppliers and workers.

They call for a probe into Amazon’s Most Favored Nation deals (“fair pricing policy”), the practice of sponsoring search results, and spiraling fees. They want the EU to adequately fund DMA enforcement, with “measures to prevent regulatory capture.” And they want Amazon to publish clear explanations for how search results, buy box placement, and other practices hidden behind a veil of secrecy.

Amazon will doubtless claim that disclosing how those systems work will make it easier for spammers and scammers to game their way to the top of search results. We should be skeptical of this claim — content moderation is the last domain where anyone takes the bankrupt idea of security through obscurity seriously:

https://doctorow.medium.com/como-is-infosec-307f87004563

Finally, the report calls for breaking up Amazon, forcing it to choose between being a platform seller or a platform user, calling this the only way to “prevent the conflicts of interest between its role as a platform intermediary, seller, and service provider.”

The technical term for this measure is “structural separation” — a rule that bans platform companies from competing with their business customers. This is the principle at work in the US bipartisan AMERICA Act, which would force Google and Meta to spin off the parts of their ad-tech business that put them in a conflict of interest. Right now, Googbook represents both publishers and advertisers, while operating the marketplace where ad sales take place, and they take 51% out of every ad dollar:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech

Structural separation hasn’t really been applied in the US for a generation, but it’s gained currency in recent years, for the obvious reason that the referee can’t also own one of the teams. I was in Germany last week speaking to regulators and politicians, and they espoused skepticism that the EU would embrace structural separation anytime soon.

But they were wrong! Today, the European Commission announced plans to force Google and Meta to sell off their conflict-of-interest ad-tech lines of business, mirroring the provisions of the US AMERICA Act:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/06/google-may-soon-be-ordered-to-break-up-its-lucrative-ad-business-eu-warns/

Structural separation really is the policy we should be demanding. It’s amazing that lawyers who would never argue a case in front of a judge who was married to the plaintiff will turn around and defend the idea that Amazon can fairly operate a marketplace where they compete with other sellers.

With Amazon dominating online sales, and with in-person retail cratering, Amazon’s decisions have the power to determine the outcome of whole swathes of Europe’s economy. This is the “planned economy” that the EU claims it detests and seeks to prevent — but it’s an economy planned by distant autocrats in a Seattle boardroom, for the purpose of extracting the surpluses needed to launch an endless procession of penis-rockets.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/14/flywheel-shyster-and-flywheel/#unfulfilled-by-amazon

[Image ID: A desert ruin. In the foreground is a huge Amazon box, with an EU flag in place of its shipping label. Atop the box are the feet and partial legs of an Oxymandias figure.]

Image: Rama (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gladiator_with_sword-Louis_Ernest_Meissonnier-MG_1216-IMG_1223-white.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/fr/deed.en

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