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Comment by dannyr | Hacker News Reader

If a business chooses how they make money to survive, can you just say "I don't like how you make money so I'll just get everything for free"?

If you don't like how a company uses ads (regular, spammy, deceptive), no better way than tell them than by not giving them any traffic at all.

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Users are allowed to control how they view content on their own computer. Facebook has chosen to give the content out for free and users may choose to render the content however they wish.

Facebook is free to charge for the service.

"Facebook has chosen to give the content out for free".

No, it's not free. Facebook makes money off data from its users.

The "free" in this case is the fact that they have not charged any fee to obtain the data.

Let me paraphrase your statement then

""Facebook has chosen to give the content out for free BY SERVING ADS".

And the user is in no way obligated to look at the ads. If I start a business giving away things for free expecting the users to pay me back later but in no way requiring them to and it doesn't work out then thats just a bad business model.

The internet/web is USED by businesses.

The internet/web is not FOR businesses.

Perhaps that's the fundamental difference in perspective about who's responsibility it is to make allowances for who serves/receives content...

In this case, yes, yes you can. Although note that the value flows in the other direction. We're getting Facebook content (worthless), they're getting our attention (valuable).

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