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Comment by eznzt | Hacker News Reader

Well of course they hunger for user data. THey are free services. Would you rather have to pay for whatsapp? Or have banner ads? Because I rather not

And the comparison to imessage is a bloody joke. You already paid a shitton of money for your iphone, they don't need your data for anything

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> Or have banner ads?

You do realize that this type data collection is almost always in service of displaying ads, in some way, to users, don’t you? There’s been reports about FB working to add ads to WhatsApp for a while now [0].

[0] https://www.techradar.com/news/whatsapp-could-be-getting-ads...

I remember when you had to pay a buck a year or so for Whatsapp. I really liked the feeling of this straight forward business model and paid.

Good luck justifying the 19 billion dollar they sold their business for using $1/user/year.

How sustainable is that $1/yr tho I wonder

Would I rather have to pay?

Fucking yes! This should be the default. The default should be pay, with a free option that requires you to dump truck all your data.

Tech giants have completely ruined the internet economy. You can’t even pay for these things now. It’s just hand over all your data and secrets, or fuck off.

And the worst is that new businesses can’t compete unless they do the same. You can’t compete with free.

IMO it would be perfectly reasonable for everyone to have an Internet connection(s), and much of the rest is handled by community efforts. That's how Bittorrent works, and it's very scalable and open. Emerging protocols can add privacy. Solid is another effort in this direction, where any third party could host your data. Finding ways back to that (since it's more or less how things worked pre tech giants) offers a lot of solutions. The tech giants could even pivot (or be forced to pivot) to this approach, which is simply about being less captive on particular ecosystems. It's not even the grand vision of rich interoperability that doesn't depend on backroom deals, which is what we should be talking about now.

imo, that's a very, very dangerous proposal. I agreed with you for a couple of seconds, but this sounds like yet another way to fuck poor people.

It should just be default to not collect unnecessary data, whatever that may be, while being free. Maybe make paid plans with premium features. Everything else will just mean that Big Tech can spy and manipulate poor people, because they can't afford to pay for every service they (have) to use. We should stop tying privilege to money.

Maybe I'm being too dramatical, but that's what came to my mind after reading your suggestion.

Access to internet services is not some fundamental human right. No one HAS to use these services. You can live a perfectly fine life without FB, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter, Google, etc. I don’t have accounts with any of these services. My life is better for it.

Moreover, paying for goods and services is how the economy works. Netflix does not have a free tier. Are they fucking over poor people?

1) It is not a fundamental right at this moment, but I think it should be in the following decades. More and more things are expected to work online, with offline alternatives existing. And you are mixing general internet access with individual platforms. Sure, nobody has to use Twitter. There are situations where one is forced to use one of these platforms. And I know where you are coming from, the only account I have is from Google.

2) It's not wrong, not to have a free tier. It's not wrong to have paid plans. What I think is wrong, is defining that surveillance should be the default. Give me the option to disable analytics etc. completely. Tying this mechanic to money is wrong. You shouldn't have to pay to not be spied on.

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