Have consumers ever been offered the ability to pay Google to opt out of advertisements and to opt into 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.
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.
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...
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?"
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.
I mean its not like paid service that dont have ads and giving privacy is non existent either, we have proton mail for example
Companies should be required to be transparent about how much revenue each of these sources generates.
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
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?
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
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.
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
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.
freedom isnt free
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.
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
With the latter, there's a direct contractual relationship since you're paying Google for services