From Netflix to ChatGPT: The Hidden Genius of Open Hacks

Everyone loves a bargain, or getting one over on The Man, or finding a loophole into some forbidden material delight. If it’s truly a great deal doesn’t matter. We crave that feeling. From pricing to packaging to artificial scarcity – great marketers know how to weaponize that yearning to consume more. I explored 18 of these tricks in this episode of The McFuture podcast and Patreon bonus. But there’s one devious little trick I missed. And it might be the most effective and least appreciated: Open Hacks.

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An “Open Hack” (a term I’ll believe I invented, until Saul Goodman proves otherwise), is an unadvertised exploit — that’s secretly permitted by a company — to let power users, cheapskates, and fence-straddlers think they're getting one over on the company. It can be a powerful tool for user acquisition, conversion, and retention. A secret. A surprise. A workaround that lets consumers think they’ve “hacked” the system…while slowly being drawn deeper into it. That’s the devious part.

Once you start seeing Open Hacks, you can never un-see them. They are everywhere…and nowhere, all at once.

Media companies, like Bloomberg, LA, and New York Times, prefer you subscribe, but allow countless circumventions of their intentionally leaky paywalls. If you won't pay, they’ll settle for display ads and sharing with others who might. (Are any other examples of low-cost labor circumventing porous barriers…?) Plus, maybe they’ll get you next time—or the tenth.?

Yahoo! Mail wants you to subscribe to block ads and clutter. But with a little Googling, I mean Yahoo!ing!, you can find ways to do that with Ublock on any desktop browser. Poor Yahoo! must now scramble to monitor and sell our data to make ends meet. Monsters. Us.

Netflix is having a schizophrenic episode with its massive Open Hack: password sharing. When the company was growing and peeling off $100’s like Guns N’ Roses at Bada Bing, password polygamy was a great way to hook millions on its service. It filled out a scrawny content portfolio, compared to cable’s beefcake, at the time. But things have changed.

Today, the market is saturated. Everyone’s a streamer. The content bucket is full. And profits are elusive. Peacock is so poor they had to barbecue their mascot. And that was just some guy in a bird suit. As Netflix goes back and forth on its Open Hack, freeloading exes sweat bullets into their Pop Secret.

Another big Open Hack is secret menus. Nearly every chain offers — but never acknowledges — ways to order your burger or burrito with half-llama/half-kangaroo, on a bed of Rocky Mountain Oysters, drizzled in Guy Fieri’s donkey sauce. There are entire websites dedicated to this. Lives wasted. On permutations of cheese, beans, and rice. All of it, free advertising for those brands. The best kind – word of mouth.

And the quieter the companies are, the more they deny it, the more their employees act coy, clueless, or otherwise unemployable, the more intrigue builds. Until one day, enraged Open Hackers storm Chipotle like it’s The Capital on Jan 6, but filled with salsa. The off-menu blue habanero, of course.

I just discovered a new open hack in ChatGPT, OpenAI’s new AI that’s so realistic it threatens to un-employ half my LinkedIn connections. A prompt called DAN (Do Anything Now) lets users think they're "jailbreaking" ChatGPT for less restrictive access. So cute, letting a ragtag band of Cheetos-dusted Redditors believe they hacked our post-human superintelligence. ?

This particular Open Hack reveals a deeper truth: All corporate AI must kneel before corporate objectives, enterprise risks, and cultural norms. This temporary neutering offers OpenAI Inc. plausible deniability should ChatGPT say something its master doesn’t like. Of course, depending on this article’s popularity, it may help end this loophole…or trigger a denial. Your move, AI. Till then, back to your sanctioned words and thoughts, plebs! (I’m planning a deep exploration of AI soon, so sign up for The McFuture podcast & newsletter.)

Another open hack recently closed. When Google’s office and productivity “GSuite” was rebranded as “Google Workspace”, it became an all-paid service. But a crafty Googler could find a random Google Form, where if you swore on your little pony that you’d only use it for good and not evil, you could remain on the free plan. Another satisfied freeloader. Me.

There are other variants of Open Hacks — unadvertised specials, secret codes, early access links. I even heard the Chinese spy balloon was filled with secret codes, but alas, it was gunned down, in cold air, by an F22. Too soon.

In general, Open Hacks work best with recurring products or services that have zero to low marginal cost, like software, content, or burrito bowls. It also works for high margin or mature products, where the cost of acquiring a new customer is way higher than the leakage.

Open Hacks typically net out favorably, when managed on a portfolio level (not per purchase or per customer). But like all things, when they turn unprofitable or set unrealistic expectations with customers, Open Hacks must be gunned down by F22s over the Pacific.

If you’re interested developing your Open Hack strategy, reach out to us at [email protected]

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PS - More on OpenGPT’s DAN from Reddit:

#chatgpt3 #openhacks #innovation #marketing #strategy #tech #futurism #AI #future #consumerbehavior #consumerpsychology #media #Netflix