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Comment by Workaccount2 | Hacker News Reader

>which online services they dedicate their time and money to.

Ain't nobody dedicating their money to anything.

That's exactly why these enormous tech giants are privacy nightmares. How many people complaining about Google have used their services extensively for decades now, and never have once given a cent to Google? Probably over 90%.

People were offended when Google launched YouTube Premium because it encroached on their right to "free" everything from Google. Even today people still chain themselves to the hill of "I will never give youtube a penny", despite them probably using a couple percentage points of their entire waking life on google products.

Europe is in a tough, if not impossible spot, of having (relatively) heavy privacy protections, while also having a population that is largely offended by the idea of having to pay for something that "has always been free!".

Maybe they can launch a taxpayer funded EuroTube and EuroGram.

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I would be very happy to discuss the matter with you but there seems to be some hostility and edge in the way you argue your point which makes it hard to engage with.

Anyway, in short, everything you said applies to literally any human or even animal: if you give them something for free and then take it away unless they pay for it, they won't accept it (google maps). On the other hand, if you provide something for a price, and it's needed, people will pay even if there is an alternative (e.g. Netflix).

The difference is that many/most people are ok with ads as a form of payment for the free services, while others (including Europeans) are not ok with the additional hidden clauses regarding how their personal data is used. Is that wrong? I don't think so.

To make it more realistic, imagine getting a TV for free because it will insert ads every X minutes. The tradeoffs are pretty clear: Good TV for my time/attention.

But if someone then started also recording from said TV the inside of my room, my and my family's faces to be sold to unknown parties for unknown uses (and sometimes even to antagonists) then I don't think anyone would believe it is a fair implementation of the original and presented "agreement" (even if it is stated in their 1000 pages ToS).

Now, if Europeans start being vocal politically that such an invasion of privacy is not acceptable, does that make their claims invalid because there is no valid alternative to such services?

I'm pretty sure today's tech giants would be profitable even without the privacy invasion and the selling of the data; furthermore if their premium versions did not actually show you ads (some show you ads even if you pay), I'm sure people will slowly start gravitating there as they stop being ok trading their attention/time for money.

But if Facebook explicitly told you "pay us X/mo or we will sell your personal data to Russia", would people actually pay them or, perhaps, would they start considering other saner alternatives? I guess we'll never know.

I think the ideal solution is forcing companies to offer privacy focused ad-free options as a subscription, with a cost calculated from the average revenue per fully tracked/ad-riddled user, maybe plus some small premium.

Of course, this would likely receive a lot of blow-back in the form of "Looks like now you have to be rich to not get your life sold to third parties" and "Google used to be equal for all and now they are just going to prey on the most vulnerable in society"

The only way to win in this situation is for people to understand that things cost money. They probably cost more than you expect, and you probably will want your ads and tracking back once you see the true cost. After all, at the end of the day, the downside to these decades of tracking to most people has been "Damn, how does google know I buy Tide detergent!".

This is a false dichotomy: it's not a given that companies must make money out of personal data.

There are things which shouldn't be for sale, and I believe personal information is one of those.

Even though we don't have another universe to compare ours to, I believe companies started selling personal data not because people didn't want to pay for their services (since they do that even if you DO pay for them) but mainly because it is profitable. End of the story.

I am always surprised why people here attach so much humanity and conventional logic to huge international for-profit VC-backed companies: they will do literally anything if at the end of the day they come out in the green (aka profitable). Even illegal things, if the expected payout is lower than profits created.

I also believe that if literally killing people made some company $X and their analysts predict having to pay $Y to governments (with $Y substantially lower than $X) once in a while, someone would eventually decide to do that. And such a company wouldn't have trouble finding shareholders and employees.

I had to add my two cents here because of my username... A problem I have is that Facebook spent a mint getting everyone on board, so a lot of folks I know use it. Myself being die-hard about not using Facebook has probably cost me a lot of network opportunities (also linked-in) people don't see me there and the hiring folks throw my resume to /dev/null The advice I receive is "give in". I pay for my email provider, but the only way into these walled gardens is be on the wrong side of the fence.

I've been party to exactly these types of policy discussions in Europe and elsewhere for a couple decades now.

The consistent political pushback against mandatory paid options that are ad-free is that it excludes people that can't afford them. It is unfair because it only advantages people with money. Therefore "free" is the only valid policy choice because there is always someone who can't pay. This limits what is possible as a practical matter.

The obvious alternative to an ad-funded model within these constraints is for the government to pay the companies for the service on condition that they remove ads from their country. Needless to say, the idea of paying "taxes" to Google et al to remove the ads is offensive to many of the same people.

So we are stuck with the status quo of "free" ad-funded services because people aren't willing to accept the necessary tradeoffs to change the situation.

The topic here is not ads vs not-ads. It's "why are companies who are already paid via ads also want to make extra money selling personal data to third parties?".

If services offered a paid version that guaranteed privacy, such that I stay anonymous and only data points that are strictly necessary to provide the service are persisted in the company's servers, I would happily pay.

And I mean guaranteed in a way that I would have legal recourse against the company if they go back on their word or screw up

You will, most people won't.

Because they know that even if you pay it's very unlikely that they will respect the deal anyways.

Baiting people with "no cost" services, and then using their data in ways that people might not agree with, hiding behind 10 subpages to click through or a huge "how we protect your data (NOT)" text is no solution though.

What would be a solution, but one that the companies don't want, is to offer a service either as a paid service or truly at no cost which includes no privacy cost. But they are afraid of doing that, because they fear that then they can't hitch the ride on data taken from users, who are not informed and who only clicked some accept button, because the business kept nagging them about it, instead of accepting a "no".

I have to admit though, that Google did better than most other big techs, as they do provide a consent dialog, where rejecting is as easy as accepting. See for example YouTube. And not sure about Google search, since I don't use it these days. However, I did not research (and that's how one would have to call it), whether rejecting is truly adhered to, or they sneak in not actually needed things as "functional cookies" or something.

However, lets not have any illusions here. If the EU didn't demand things to improve and didn't impose fines, big tech would have done exactly nothing of the sort.

What specific legal recourse beyond what exists? You can already sue for breach of contract if a company violates their privacy policy. The real problems are: (1) detecting violations in the first place, and (2) proving/quantifying damages. A 'guarantee' doesn't solve either.

Perhaps if the choice was "forced", it would encourage actual competition.

I'm pissing in the wind, but I'd prefer it if the use of personal data - sold for adverts - was banned outright. Particularly for large companies.

This would forced Google et al to charge for their services, creating the market that would stimulate competitors (Open Source or otherwise).

People will argue against this, but online advertising that got us to where we are is the absolute scourge of modern society ... it's poisoned every decent well of humanity.

Even for things like Youtube Premium, I'm certain Google are double dipping ... likely quadruple dipping.

How about the other perspective?

The current modus operandi for tech companies is to offer something for free or below market price, gain a userbase, lock them in and destroy competitors who don't have cash to burn, then alter the deal.

If I start using a company's offerings, I have certain expectations, such as the terms and conditions suddenly not changing from under me. Now, you can argue that they are required by law to inform me of any changes to the literal Terms and Conditions. Well, yes, except:

1) They are often worded so carefully from the beginning that they can start doing something exploitative at a later date, only after gaining goodwill and users by not doing it.

2) I can't very well stop using a service if doing so incurs a loss to me. Phone operators are required by law in some countries to allow customers to transfer their phone number to a competitor. I am not aware of a similar law for email addresses. And email is at least 1:1, what any other operator offers it technologically compatible due to open protocols, so a transfer is possible. There are services with no 1:1 alternative.

( Hopefully Open Social will change that but we're not there yet: https://overreacted.io/open-social/ )

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There's also informed consent. Most countries don't allow people below a certain age to have sex because they might not understand all the implications and consequences. How many people do truly understand how tracking and profiling works, the risks of data breaches, doxxing, stalking, surveillance, etc? I argue informed consent cannot be formed unless people are aware of _exactly_ where each bit of data about them is stored and accessed; and also are made aware of the probabilities of all the possible adverse events over their lifetime.

Have consumers ever been offered the ability to pay Google to opt out of advertisements and to opt into privacy?

Somewhat. You can pay for workspace to keep your email private and ad free.

Guarded by a "privacy policy". This is Google. How come this "if you're not paying for it, you're the product" crowd doesn't get that it doesn't matter if you're paying or not, you're always the product?

I don't like this argument since this is can be applied to everything and You expect people to roll out their own service for everything since everything is a product in some form or another

its okay to depends on some product because they are just good, for example people free to use Office alternative which is free btw but people literally dont choose that because MS Office is just better

all of this deep talk discussion is irrelevant since User want an working product that they expect them to

its just that

Id be shocked if the freemium privacy policy & obligations for, say, Gmail is the same as the corporate privacy policy under GSuite/Workspace...

With the latter, there's a direct contractual relationship since you're paying Google for services

Because we're not idiots and we read the "privacy policy"? And shock, it's different for their enterprise products? What, do you think all corporations using google are just stupid and giving up all their confidential data?

It’s the same in all consumer marketplaces. Free or freemium has won. It‘s not Google specific.

The vast majority of peope put very little value on their time and attention and sense of aesthetics (even if they might say otherwise). It's the only explanation for why advertising is as pervasive as it is.

Facebook offered paid subscription for ad-free experience in Europe.[1] First, europeans complained it is too expensive. After a price cut, they EC still wanted a free version with less personalization.[2]

If google offers something similar, I am pretty sure Europeans will find something else to complain about.

[1] https://about.fb.com/news/2024/11/facebook-and-instagram-to-...

[2] https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-will-let-facebook...

ad-free and "we won't sell your data" are two different things.

Meta was recently fined 200M€ for offering that choice. Seems unfortunate, but maybe I misunderstood.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/03/meta_ec_dma_sulk/

The law defines what companies can or cannot do around privacy. So Meta can't go around telling users to pay to get the privacy the law affords them anyway or conversely, if users don't pay they don't get the privacy.

The root of the issue is probably the "freely given consent" that the law defines. If Meta charges users unless they consent to something, then the consent isn't freely given.

I think the issue is not actually how freely given consent is defined, but that these tech giants want to not only offer a useful service, but they also want to be allowed to do whatever they want with user data accumulated through usage of their otherwise useful service. For providing their service, they don't have to use data in the ways that they want to use it. If they were running an honest business, they would be charging the user for using their useful services, not trying to make dime with user data without consent, manufactured "consent", or extorted "consent".

They wriggle and wriggle, instead of running an honest business, where people buying access to their platforms would actually reflect the usefulness and real value of people being willing to pay for a service. That would be a very transparent number, and that cannot be made look more than it is to shareholders though. I think if they did this, then their whole value would collapse massively back down to sane levels. Now they have blown this whole ads and attention machinery waaay out of proportion and will do anything to keep it pumped up. Heck, they want to pump it up even more, because we all know iiiinfinite growth! They would not be satisfied, if their business spanned the whole solar system.

No, the ruling said that the free version shouldn’t gather/use as much data as now. The problem is with the free part, not that you can pay for the ad free version. If the free part is not that invasive, it’s completely fine to keep the pay-or-use-your-data model.

About a decade ago google trialed a program where you could pay monthly to "buy out" ad spaces. So you wouldn't get served ads, or you would get served fewer ads, and the money would be deducted from what you allotted per month.

Of course

"What kind of dumbass would pay to not see ads when uBlock Origin is free? lololol"

It didn't ever get traction or last very long before being canned. This is the mentality that money-compensation-business-plan tech companies would have to face; "What kind of dumbass would pay for your product?"

Because it's extortion just like paying the mafia for "protection" from themselves.

See, ads are not a pro-social service. Their fundamental goal is not to inform and facilitate mutually beneficial exchange of goods/services. Their goal is to allow companies who spend ad-money to gain an advantage over competitors who don't, regardless of quality of the product.

Ads are a fundamentally anti-competitive practice.

while I agree that Ads is sucks as a whole but how can you generate revenue from free service ?????

I mean its not like paid service that dont have ads and giving privacy is non existent either, we have proton mail for example

You can't. So don't advertise it as free. It's just lying, simple as that. People either pay with their data, their attention or their money.

Companies should be required to be transparent about how much revenue each of these sources generates.

"You can't. So don't advertise it as free. It's just lying"

its free as you paid zero dollar

"People either pay with their data, their attention or their money."

for some people money is more important than their data, and its vice versa with wealthy customer

I agree that in the future maybe we can control how much data/money we can paid for the service but that just not possible in current time

> its free as you paid zero dollar

What about other currencies? Do you only count state-issues currencies? Have you heard about barter?

> but that just not possible in current time

Why not?

"What about other currencies? Do you only count state-issues currencies?"

well you convert them to usd

"Have you heard about barter?"

well you are free to choose paid service that else where, I dont understand this coming from. no one force you to choose free product

The point is it's not free, you're exchanging time, attention and data instead of money.

In fact, you're exchanging them at a rate you are not informed about which means you are disadvantaged in this exchange.

It would be free if for example there were 2 tiers, free and paid and the free tier would be entirely supported by the paying customers. But it's not.

This is another way companies can legally lie to customers. I honestly don't understand why you keep defending them.

"This is another way companies can legally lie to customers"

there is no lie if you paid zero dollar on it

"which means you are disadvantaged in this exchange."

what do you mean disadvantage??? stop playing victim, you dont paid anything and you get the service for free

stop acting like globalist corporate literally evil or wrong, it literally mutualism relationship

"You paid with your data" ??? then what??? You acting like everyone is important???? if you are that important then just pay up for private service

1) Your lack of proper punctuation makes some sentences hard to read and it comes off as disrespectful.

2) Generally, people use the > character for quotes. You use " and that's fine but your third quote is not an actual quote from my message. This case is harmless but it's generally rude to put words in other people's mouths and mislead anybody else reading this into thinking I said a particular thing I did not.

3) Since "You paid with your data" is actually your phrasing, you admit that data is a form of currency. And since as you said, I paid, it cannot by definition be free.

4) Your insistence that state-issues currencies (or only the dollar) are the only valid currencies is wrong. People commonly perform other forms of exchange of both goods and services, surely you wouldn't claim e.g. somebody is performing work for free when he asks you for a counter-service or non-monetary compensation. I suggest reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consideration , it is closely related.

5) Disadvantage means one side of the negotiation has more information it can leverage to make a more beneficial deal to it at the expense of the other party. Since I don't know how much money my attention and data makes the company, I can't negotiate a fair price for me to pay in monetary terms instead of attention and data.

6) I am clearly important enough that my data, time and attention have monetary value.

7) What if I belong to a minority which would be targeted under a different regime? My data can be used to profile me. If the data can be sold or published today, there's nothing stopping a future government or even non-governmental organizations from using it. The right to privacy and the right to control my data is just as important as free speech for maintaining a free society.

well you just use another service that offer privacy

freedom isnt free

The more you’re willing to pay to opt out of ads the more valuable the ads are. Also the ads are auctioned and in opting out you’re all ways going to be the highest bidder. Additionally how would you know the other bidders were real, it’s a massive information asymmetry that’s open to abuse. And I’m pretty sure they have abused it in the past.

I use substack and patreon and I wish we had micro transactions that’ll enable more of this model for content.

Now much of the same info is recycled via AI, instead of reading blogs / stack overflow etc I just ask AI and so far I can use AI without ads. I do pay for a subscription to Gemini.

> taxpayer funded EuroTube and EuroGram

I believe an EU member state could create any service that American companies already proved are desirable, make it free for nationals and residents and require payment for others, and use EUDI as the login and verification. Probably for quite cheap. They're just too incompetent.

Assuming the USA doesn't send their ambassadors (yes the government is concerned if you want to replace microsoft and similar) to show them the carrot and the stick for not buying software from the USA. It's a thing they have done already.

>People were offended when Google launched YouTube Premium because it encroached on their right to "free" everything from Google.

Markets outcomes are not a prophecy.

If it was so simple - why put the unsubscrube or privacy rules behind UI/UX features that required A/B testing and behavioral analysis to make it as onerous as possible?

People aren't happy that they to sell their privacy, and had to be reassured that this is the best option.

Not to mention, this was during an era of camraderie between the US and Europe, not a potential opponent. The idea of a taxpayer funded EuroTube and EuroGram or CountryThing will pick up steam. Why have your information farmed by a nation which acts in a hostile manner to its erstwhile allies?

> Maybe they can launch a taxpayer funded EuroTube and EuroGram.

Ok, but only if one of them is called “EuroVision”.

This really is a major issue imho. Many of the people here and those who are more tech savvy would be willing to pay for such a thing, but we are a very small minority. 90% of people don't care, or are unable or unwilling to understand the consequences of having all their data vacuumed up by corporations like Google and Facebook. Its a Tyranny of the majority type of situation. I'm not sure what the solution to this would be other than maybe better educating the populace.

Most of these things are emotionally driven. Education won’t do shit unless it’s coupled with some kind of training action. People will just laugh it off or accept it. Most people have literally come to accept their phone is listening to them for ads!

Either regulation, or it needs to get so shitty and painful that people get a reflexive avoidance thing going on.

The real problem is that all the downsides of the "tracking and advertising" tech world are largely hypotheticals and/or so subtle and divorced from day to day life as to be almost imperceptible.

There hasn't really been a "reap what you sow" moment for people who threw privacy caution to the wind for free stuff.

Yup, though the current US gov’t is working hard to make that happen, near as I can tell. We’ll see what happens!

Maybe accepting that they do not agree with you?

>money

Android phone contracts seem strangely cheap.

>People were offended when Google launched YouTube Premium because it encroached on their right to "free" everything from Google.

Nope. At least I was offended, because YT Premium wanted $15 from me for hosting other people's videos. That's more than streaming services that pay for production of TV shows and movies.

Don't think they really need THAT much to cover hosting costs. Not when they operate on that scale and in addition can hover up and profit on all the usage data.

If YT Premium costed $3 or $5, I'd pay and I'd bully any friends and family that watch YT and don't pay into supporting the service. As it is now, my appraisal skill says "SCAM" and I pirate YT with clean conscience.

Youtube has a 60/40 revenue share with creators for long form video (inverse for shorts). 60% to creators 40% to youtube. It's also dependent on watch time and split evenly among channels (unlike spotify where big names get all the money and small guys get nothing). Youtube premium viewers are the juiciest viewers for creators, by a large margin.

Also blocking-ads/pirating on youtube provides the creators with nothing. I'm not sure how people justify this besides the established internal conditioning that anything on the internet must be free. Also conversion rates for "watches all their content" to "pays for their patreon" are <1%. meanwhile ad-blocking/pirating rates are around 40-60% depending on your audience.

At some point the internet has got to have a reckoning with reality if they want things to improve.

It depends if Google ranks all users' watch time the same or less profitable users are weighted less in the "algorithm"

If all users' are ranked the same then loyal adblocking users can still help a lot

It's weighted on the individuals watch time, not all of YouTube's watch time. That's why it's so good for small channels. The most amount of your money goes to whatever channels you watch the most, regardless of their size.

In a free and competitive market, the price of any good trends towards the marginal cost of production.

Producing de novo some valuable information--a YouTube video, blog post, software program, news article, song, etc.--has a real cost that must be paid for each new information good created.

But making copies of information in our digital world with gigabit networks and terabyte disks is now very nearly free, so the marginal cost of production of copies of any piece of information is very nearly zero.

This is why centralization and scale are such powerful strategies for IP-based industries: They offer enormous leverage. And it's also why they are so dependent on government intervention to ensure unfree markets.

These creators can only make a profit if they are able to monopolize their information goods. If a new "factory" opens up down on BitTorrent Boulevard literally giving your product away for free, how can you compete with that? Moreover, what incentive do you have to produce new goods in the first place, if anyone can just offer infinite copies of your product to the market for free?

Thus, these creators rely on government intervention to make it illegal to offer copies of their information goods. But there's a fundamental tension between the twin economic realities that the marginal cost of production is ~zero yet the marginal price of consumption is nonzero. Thus, piracy.

In my opinion the copyright system is broken in the digital age. Instead of granting monopolies on information goods produced, we ought to figure out an alternative economic structure that incentivizes the production of these information goods in proportion to their consumption while accepting that their marginal cost of production is zero and abandoning any attempt to control the copying, transmission, creation of derivative works, etc.

Dons psychic hat - and EuroTube and EuroGram will be widely ignored because most people are not only apparently fine with getting taken advantage of if it’s shiny and they don’t notice it.

The reason for all the data/lack of privacy stuff is because most people get something from it - the next shiny manipulative BS thing, or shiny gadget or whatever.

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