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Comment by xg15 | Hacker News Reader

It's actually worth reading the article to the end, because otherwise you'd be missing the amazing final paragraph:

> Lastly, it’s good to remember nothing truly comes for free. Software costs money to develop. If you’re not paying towards that, then it’s likely you – or your data – are the product. We need to revolutionise how we think about our own data and what value it truly holds.

Ignoring the fact that this is not how it works - there are plenty of services where you pay and still are the product - the last sentence makes it clear that the author sees privacy as the problem, not tracking.

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I don’t pay for bash yet I have plenty of excellent tooling in it thats free, and I’m not the product. Software can be released freely just like a poem can be. The people who develop popular software like one of the functions in bash I use for free probably aren’t hurting for work I’d imagine.

They're working, but not necessarily getting paid.

> The people who develop popular software like one of the functions in bash I use for free probably aren’t hurting for work I’d imagine.

I wouldn't assume that; I would donate what you can. I've been to two pay-what-you-can theater performances recently. How can I not give those people - who value every dime, who many others stiff, and where you know 100% goes to a worthy cause - more than the corporate productions, who couldn't care less about me or community and where the money goes to some billionaires and shareholders who couldn't care less about art and look forward to AI and cost-cutting layoffs. The last thing I want is the local artists, who do it for the art, to not see people's love and appreciation or to stop.

Around 5-10 years ago, IIRC the maintainer of a relatively well-known Linux distro moved home to (Minnesota?) because they had no health insurance and couldn't afford the Bay Area (or something like that, my memory is sketchy).

Also don't forget the sh-t-ton of abuse open source maintainers take.

You're also not executing bash on their servers, which is much different than say HackerNews even.

A lot of us are getting paid to use bash. Negative cost. Hyperfree software.

1. There are services that you pay for where you are still the product - true

2. There are services that you pay for where you are not the product

3. All services that you don’t pay for you are the product.

So the first step is getting people to pay for the service

Another way is to make it problematic for a commercial entity to provide high value services for free. Basically an anti-dumping law, but for digital goods.

Yes, and raise prices for everyone?

Maybe paying $10/mo for email or $199 once for a browser is a good thing. Maybe if people didn't feel like browsers and email and search were human rights that should be given to them freely, moral hazards be damned, the internet wouldn't be the clusterfuck that it is now?

There are millions of people in the world who buy unsubsidized Android phones for less than $60 a year in developing countries.

Even in the US, the median cost of an Android phone is less than $300 and then you expect them to pay $200 for a browser?

Besides, it’s never just a one time purchase. Is that one time purchase going to get you security updates and if so, for how long?

You appear to be confusing the cost of something verses the price of something.

I can eat junk food cheaply every day, I pay the price later.

So the people who can’t afford to pay for their browser, email, etc…

Let them eat cake?

It's kind of funny to use that exact statement, but after you put profit seeking corporations in charge of our of our information you'll find they commonly find democracy 'not profitable enough' and will go about manipulating/controlling you via your own information to further increase their profits and control over you. I guess your option is becoming the cake to get ate.

Meanwhile over in "lets not cede all control to corporations" land, did we forget the the internet was actually funded by the government in the first place? Have we already tossed away ideas like the rural electrification project?

No matter how the internet was originally funded, most of the current infrastructure that gives us the speed and bandwidth we have today and the hardware was done by private companies.

Who is going to pay for the browser?

Do you really want the government controlling how you access information?

>Do you really want the government controlling how you access information?

You've already given that power to corporations, and corporations have far fewer regulations on actually performing said control (as in they are able to control you far more).

You are so deep into Reganomics "government is bad, corporations are good" that you don't realize these large (near) monopoly status corporations are effectively their own governments in amount of power and control they have.

It’s not reagonomics it’s just the opposite. Whatever party you align yourself with, just think of the power the other party would use to stifle speech that they don’t agree with.

I have a lot more power not to use Chrome or Android than not to be under the rule of a hostile government.

Whether it’s the religious right who are in control of one party or Tipper Gore going after rap music in the other party, do you really want the government controlling the web?

Reagonomics was about thinking the government is incompetent. I think the government is hostile.

If you don't petition your government to prevent monopolies, then you have just as little choice being under hostile companies. Of course I'm sure you think having the choice of Apple rather than Android completely makes up for this.

Enriching these large companies will ensure you live under a hostile government too. Once they are big enough to rent seek, they become the primary lobbying power, and you're back in the exact same position of being under a hostile government.

Next I expect to hear something out of you about private water companies and roads as the solution to all of our problems.

So instead I should let the government be in control? Without bringing in my own viewpoints. Just think about how the “other” party that you disagree with can and will abuse any power you give it.

> Once they are big enough to rent seek, they become the primary lobbying power, and you're back in the exact same position of being under a hostile government.

Can any of the corporations with power put people in jail or confiscate your property for disagreeing with them? Can they get you fired for teaching something that is “too woke”. Did you not see what the governor of Florida did with Disney because they had the nerve to disagree with him?

Are you really okay with giving government that power?

Show me the steps that would need to happen for Google to harass me for walking down the street because I don’t look like I belong in my own neighborhood.

Lets move from the street to 'private spaces'

You attempt to go to your local grocery store. They use 'Google Identity' which they are perfectly allowed to as a private business. You are accused of sending spam by Google (who the hells knows why, they never explain anything) and you are barred access.

Being the staunch libertarian you are, you leap over the public roadway afraid of catching communism if you touch it and go to the grocery store across the road. It turns out they are using 'Amazon Identity' and via an information sharing agreement with Google (private businesses can share information about you, right?), and you're also denied access to that store.

You'll go to another store, right.... Oops, turned out after we got rid of monopoly laws there are only two different stores in your community after consolidation of the industry. Luckily for you there is a toll road that you can take a 30 minute drive to another place that uses a different set of identifiers to let you in.

We busted monopolies and company stores years ago because businesses harassed and murdered people left and right!. Have you forgot the history of the Pinkertons, or are you just blindly ignorant of that part of US history?

And this completely fantastical future pails in comparison to what the government and the police state do today without any repercussions.

This is what police will do today to people who disagree with them

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/08/23/us/marion-county-record-n...

> We busted monopolies and company stores years ago because businesses harassed and murdered people left and right!….

I’m sure I need to be more worried about Google murdering people than some yokels claiming they were doing a “citizens arrest” where the prosecutor covered up video taped evidence…

https://www.wtoc.com/2022/12/28/timeline-former-brunswick-da...

But I guess I should be more worried about Google putting a cookie on my computer…

Not that I would ever personally use Chrome

I like how you associate the police with the broadband part of the government like there all the same group.

Even better, we had your magical word where the police didn't exist in the past... It was not a pleasant place unless you were the strongman. The police state was just as bad back then, or bully state.

So you really think that a future President Desantis with his “War on Woke” wouldn’t love to leverage any power you give him to suppress speech he doesn’t agree with? He’s already doing that with Disney in Florida

> I have a lot more power not to use Chrome or Android than not to be under the rule of a hostile government

Yeah, you can choose between Google or Apple. Hooray.

It's practically impossible to avoid Google if you value having a social life. Enough people have tried.

> Reagonomics was about thinking the government is incompetent. I think the government is hostile.

Oh yeah great, so it's even worse than Reaganomics.

At least a government csn be kept in check by a construction and can be changed by elections.

On the other hand, corporations have no obligations towards you at all. It's the entire point of private enterprise that they can do what they want and don't owe any responsibility.

> At least a government csn be kept in check by a construction and can be changed by elections.

That’s cute in theory. But the way that the electoral college is designed, the Senate with two votes, gerrymandering etc that doesn’t work out too well in practice.

Democracy works fine if you’re in the majority - well not actually see all of the caveats above - but that doesn’t work if you are in the minority - any type of minority.

> It's the entire point of private enterprise that they can do what they want and don't owe any responsibility.

I could argue the same about law enforcement, imminent domain, civil forfeiture, and getting harassed because I “look suspicious”

There might be ways around the price issue. But if it really came down to that, I'd argue "there's no free lunch" should apply.

We already pay a price to have regulatory watchdogs intervene when companies cheat the market and or distort the rules and impact society as a whole, so it wouldn't be unprecedented either.

Google Chrome is easily replaceable and is thus not a high value service

The largely dominant browser is never "easily replaceable".

We could write PHD thesis about why, but we can take a meta look at it: there's reasons they became dominant in the first place, and those reasons need to disappear before it's easily replaceable (of course additional reasons will pile up the longer the browser stays dominant)

>3. All services that you don’t pay for you are the product.

I certainly don't feel like I am the product when I use Wikipedia.

As they advertise to you for their latest fundraiser…

Do you think large corporations will donate to support Chrome developers who get paid at the level of Google employees?

People aren’t willing to donate to support Firefox. It’s funding mostly comes from Google.

I mean promoting a fundraiser still doesn't seem to make me a product, and Wikipedia is still pretty solvent regardless. Another example might be Linux software repositories.

>> If you’re not paying towards that, then it’s likely you – or your data – are the product

> Ignoring the fact that this is not how it works - there are plenty of services where you pay and still are the product

That refutation of their statement is not how logic works. They made a !A -> B statement ("not pay" -> "you are product"). Your statement, ! (A -> !B), which is equivalent to B -> !A is orthogonal to their statement.

Word. I just tried to log in Godaddy to change some DNS records and it asked me to disable adblock/tracking protection, and I pay for the domain

Genuinely I would buy a boxed copy of the web browser I use (LibreWolf) for $60

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