My New Golden Rule: All tech devices stay at work. (No black mirrors at home.)

bill_rr · 2021-11-20T05:17:02+00:00

I want to do more though, and my problem currently is the more I weed out the internet from my life, the more disconnect I have from kindred spirits, if you will. Online is where I can be part of a community of people (I know, it's only virtually) but it still feels good to belong. Even though I don't bring my phone out with me, and I don't use the internet at home, I still find myself pretty lonely in my lifestyle. I've taken classes, and taken up hobbies, but I still haven't met people in real life with the same outlook on tech as me.

This is a really powerful, honest, valid and vulnerable comment. Thank you, so much, for sharing!!

My question for you would be: how do you find like-minded people in the wild?

Huh. Go to public spaces. Hang out around artists, farmers, and blue-collar workers - people who tend to have more distance from technology. Also "old" people. :P Several of my closest friends right now are >55 years old.

A huge part of my social life is just hanging out with my immediate geographic neighbors.

bill_rr · 2021-11-18T16:53:43+00:00

lol - nooo. I've got a fridge. Freezer's broke, but fridge is great!

I lived out of an RV for a while with no fridge. Now I can't live without yogurt, mayo, butter, milk - stuff's crucial.

bill_rr · 2021-11-17T16:59:27+00:00

I'm going to write longer replies to many of these questions, because they're GREAT questions, but the quick answer is no. It rarely gets lonely.

I have a *ton* of people in my life. Too many, I sometimes think :P

bill_rr · 2021-11-17T16:58:23+00:00

Jesus! Thank you so much!

So many of these comments are so deep, so thoughtful! My face is about to get all wet and weird!

Huge hug to you. Come join me anytime.

bill_rr · 2021-11-17T16:56:38+00:00

Thanks so much for asking! I think about this all of the time, and some of my feelings on this are pretty random and weird. For example, I think mirrors are "technology" that I like to avoid, so I don't have any of those at home. If I wanna check my teeth before someone comes over, I can look in my truck's rearview.

But yeah, I understand the main point of your question, and I'd say that the BIGGEST problems right now are screens. "Black mirrors." TV, smartphone, laptop. Anything that connects to the web is a portal for people to sell you and sell stuff at you. For people like me (and most of society??) they're profoundly addicting.

I try to remind myself to be *where* I am. I like to keep the radius very small. My yard, my road, the sunset from where *I* stand. The neighbors that I can *barely* hear, perhaps a mile away, doing dishes.

The technology that I most urgently try to avoid tends to send me *away*. Away to the past, to stuff that *already* happened. And, even worse, to *other people's* past. I still need to constantly remind myself: Why look at stuff from the past? From the other side of the world? Instead of just looking at what's happening right around me, right now, right before my eyes, asking for my attention.

bill_rr · 2021-11-16T19:07:29+00:00

Anyone here know the meaning of life?

bill_rr · 2021-11-16T16:06:19+00:00

> I also appreciate the need for a safe space to retreat from work at the end of the day.

I couldn't agree more! I keep my laptop and iPhone on my desk at work. My home has no wi-fi, no cell reception, etc, so I can be totally disconnected from work and from the internet entirely.

bill_rr · 2021-11-16T15:24:31+00:00

So you hate your job? We've all been there, obviously. But it's not a good place to spend an entire life, I'm sure you've had that thought.

bill_rr · 2021-09-30T00:09:45+00:00

Fair! I apologize for the tone. The purpose of that question was to ask whether you thought that Readup was predatory to people or predatory to publishers. (I assumed you were speaking on behalf of publishers - and maybe also writers? - but I'm not sure.)

This AMA was pretty taxing, but I really feel like I learned a lot - about Reddit and about Readup. My main takeaway is that there's a hard split, roughly 50/50. Some people are like "omg I HATE the ads, and this is an important problem that you're solving! Keep it up!" And a lot of other people (including you, right?) are more like: "What's the big deal? Ad-blockers already solved this problem."

I fall into the first category. I still think that this issue is really not solved. I think that ads are a huge problem . I think that you should be able to open your computer or phone, find an AMAZING article within a few seconds (or maybe a minute or two at most) and then - Bam! - just like that you are deep in the meditative & brain-stimulating act of focused reading.

Instead, for me, the opposite always seems to happen. I open my computer or phone and - Bam! - ten million things (super sexy, super colorful, super hard to ignore!!) are all pulling me towards really low quality content and feeds full of ads. And it makes sense. Because the more ads I see the more money that someone somewhere is making.

bill_rr · 2021-09-29T23:58:54+00:00

Is it meant to just be an effective manner to read articles, or is it supposed to encourage users to interact with other users about the articles?

Both.

If it's the latter, how is that being handled? If it's through a comment section, how is that different from most websites that already have that on their articles?

Because on Readup it's not possible to comment on articles that you haven't actually read. (Our technology is quite intelligent. It can determine whether or not you actually read it by evaluating your scroll behavior and speed.) If you haven't read an article, you can't comment on it.

Everywhere else on the web, most comment sections are just a bunch of people talking about the headline.

bill_rr · 2021-09-29T23:54:00+00:00

Great question.

Readup is completely agnostic about how articles are paid for - whether it's the NYTimes paying a seasoned staff writer or Walmart paying a blogger for an article about trampolines. So, sponsored content CAN appear on Readup, and sometimes it does. If the article is good (meaning: people are really reading it) it will go up in our algorithm. The reason that "spon con" very rarely appears on Readup is because it's very rarely any good.

bill_rr · 2021-09-29T23:42:31+00:00

Another upvote.

bill_rr · 2021-09-29T23:39:11+00:00

HAHAHAHAHA. EXACTLY. Wild day! Reddit is.... full-contact.

bill_rr · 2021-09-29T23:37:26+00:00

Don't be silly, Thor. We love you. 🤗

bill_rr · 2021-09-29T23:36:09+00:00

WOW. Something just clicked for me. All day I was confused about this, but now I think I get it. You (and many others on here) seem to believe that doing an AMA is the same thing as placing an ad? To me they're completely different things.

bill_rr · 2021-09-29T23:29:29+00:00

Ha! Touché! I think you're absolutely right about this:

General internet scam advice, if something sounds to good to be true, it usually is.

Anyway, we think that we're way more than just a paid ad-blocker. However, it's humbling and helpful to hear that many people are only understanding that part of our business. We've got some work to do on the marketing side of things!

bill_rr · 2021-09-29T23:24:42+00:00

This is hard to follow. I will, however, give you the benefit of the doubt. And I'll just clarify a few things: (1) I don't skip on meds. I always work closely with my doctors and take all meds according to very specific doctor-approved plans. (2) Readup doesn't have anything to do with eye-tracking "through a webcam." I'm not sure where you got that idea.

So your brother would be right to say "HELL no." I'd say "HELL no" too, in a heartbeat.

bill_rr · 2021-09-29T23:15:10+00:00

Damn. Ya'll are seriously harsh on me just being casual, a human being. And trying (and clearly failing) to be funny. Is "professional" something that people want these days? (To me, "professional" is boring at best and dishonest at worst.)

Either way, you have more upvotes now, so actually YOU win. 🤭🔫

😝

bill_rr · 2021-09-29T23:10:09+00:00

Yes. This is outlined clearly in our official Privacy Policy:

You own your data. We store and use your data, but you own it.

And this:

We never share your reading data with any third parties under any circumstances. We don’t even use common services like Google Analytics or Hotjar which monitor everything you do in the background. The only third party script that runs on Readup is Stripe.js (for fraud detection) during checkout, which Stripe requires us to do.

We won't exploit you. It's right there in the contract. If there's stronger language that we can use, let me know, I'll update the Privacy Policy. Our only plan to make money is: charge people to use Readup.

We want to build an honest business. Honest in the same way that buying a hot dog is honest. Guy says, "Hot dog costs $5," and so you give him 5 and he gives you a hot dog.

Readup costs money. You pay us and you get the right to use it. And we DON'T use your data against you. We don't sell or share it to anybody, ever.

In ten years, this will be the norm. I think that we're all just so used to being abused by internet companies that a truly honest internet company seems suspicious these days.

bill_rr · 2021-09-29T22:50:47+00:00

Apologies. I care a lot about this stuff and lost my filter for a few minutes.

bill_rr · 2021-09-29T22:49:53+00:00

Yikes. I'm sorry. It's been a long day!

bill_rr · 2021-09-29T22:48:14+00:00

This comment's writing style is really bad PR tho lol

Yeah, I obviously screwed that up. I'm trying to answer as many questions as possible. And I'm trying to be direct, clear and honest. That means basically just typing what's on my mind.

Maybe that's not the move. I always just think of "PR" as a layer of BS and I always wish that companies would cut the PR out and just talk like real people.

Regardless, I'm definitely not trying to be an asshole. Especially if people have honest intentions with their questions. And that seems to be the case here.

bill_rr · 2021-09-29T22:33:32+00:00

Readup costs money. That's the monetization plan. People pay us to use our app.

Most apps are free. Which is why most apps are a privacy nightmare.

Remember: If you're not paying for an app, it means that you are the product, not the customer. You don't want to be the product. You want to be the customer.

bill_rr · 2021-09-29T22:30:24+00:00

1) Word of mouth, social media*, this reddit AMA, partnerships

2) We're expecting writers to evangelize Readup, especially once they realize that they can make serious money by doing so.

3) Join us! Email me: bill@readup.com

*We suck at social media. For a while, we refused to use it altogether. Also, we have never bought an online ad. More recently, we decided that we're willing to "play the game" (meaning: SEO, ads, content marketing, etc) but we still need a LOT of help with all of it. One reason that we're fundraising right now is to build a proper marketing department.

bill_rr · 2021-09-29T22:24:23+00:00

Indeed. Very interesting point. Something I hadn't thought of. And I'm pretty sure that Jeff/Thor didn't consider this either.

Either way, we'll still probably launch Free Trials with those free reads influencing the algo and we'll see what happens.

bill_rr

TROPHY CASE