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Comment by motoxpro | Hacker News Reader

I'm happy to watch ads so I don't have to pay for Instagram, Google Search & Docs, Gmail, Twitch, Youtube and most of my podcasts. I wouldn't be able to afford it if I couldn't pay with scrolling of my mouse past such ad (or my data, no worries)

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If it wasn't for free and if you wouldn't be able to afford it, your government might see the need to provide this as a public service, as in my opinion should be the case anyway. Or projects like peerTube would take off. Or... countless other options that currently aren't really options because some company already has a monopoly-grip on the entire market.

I would still have to pay for it, it would just cost me more in taxes. People who work for the government don't work for free. Right now I am paying with my attention/data instead of with my money which I like.

I REALLY do not want to pay for a bunch of random services with my tax dollars. In your example, once I lose interest in youtube (or peertube in this case) I would still be paying for other people to use it and I get no benefit.

Right now, when I lose interest in Facebook (as I did) I just move on to the next service, it is unbelievably friction free. I just type a few letters in a URL.

Facebook dislodged Myspace, Tiktok is competing with Facebook, Discord is a brand new social media product. Anyone is totally free to create a subscription service or alternative (see DuckDuckGo). I don't understand the monopoly case.

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