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Comment by Jemm | Hacker News Reader

Proves the saying, "If you are not paying for the product, you are the product"

You're still the product for a whole bunch of paid services. The line has blurred significantly since that saying became commonplace.

Logic 101: "If A, Then B" does NOT imply "If not-A, Then not-B".

Human speech is not formal logic. The only point of saying ((bad thing)) is a consequence of an action (using free services) is to imply that not doing that (using non-free services since you can assume that not using anything is not a realistic opton) would have avoided ((bad thing)).

Not true for self hosted open source software.

Not necessarily. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/base-files/+bug/17...

Not much choice with browsers!

As far as I know, Orion browser is the only browser on the market today that you can pay for with your wallet instead of your data.

No website I have worked for has ever called users the product. The products are what is being built by various teams. For ads the product at a high level is everything from the parts that show ads to users to the tools that allow advertisers to create ads.

> No website I have worked for has ever called users the product.

Sure, and folks putting lead paint in children's toys don't call their wares "poison". Doesn't change anything.

Advertisers wouldn't buy all that fancy ad tooling "product" on a platform with zero users.

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