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You're justifying the abuse of people's privacy because they can't afford to buy out of it.

That might be legal for the moment but it is in no way moral.

I'm not justifying anything, I'm merely stating what I think is an unequivocally positive side effect of advertising-based models: they have automatic price discrimination built in. Subscription models do not have it built in—developers have to do extra work to introduce price discrimination. I think this is a demerit of subscription models, though not one that outweighs the demerits of advertising models.

> they have automatic price discrimination built in.

How, exactly? It's entirely opaque to the user.

At a minimum, you should offer a free, ad-supported version alongside a paid, ad-free (and tracking free) experience.

> an unequivocally positive side effect of advertising-based models

Democracies are bought on advertising.

Hiding the price of the user's attention is not a positive side effect to the user. Hiding who buys the user's attention is not a positive side effect to the user. Hiding how many other people's attentions are also being sold is not a positive side effect to the user. All of these are detriments to the user.

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