What's more important to you a free internet or your Internet privacy?
It's no secret that we trade our information for access to the Internet. So what do you prefer a subscription based Internet with privacy protection or a free internet with companies allowed to take and sell your data
A free and private internet
Yeah, I think OP has created a false dichotomy here
It's not a false dichotomy, the companies that give us access to the Internet like Google need to make money in one way or another, they sell our user data to other companies which then give targeted ads to us. If we banned the use of user data it would require a monthly subscription
You are commenting through a service that neither forces you to sell your data or pay a subscription fee and yet you don't recognise that option? :)
What web browser are you using to get to this site? Unless you're on dialup you're accessing the Internet through a web browser that uses data to pay for the upkeep of the servers
I am literally posting this on a free, non-ad supporter server via a non-browser FOSS app right now and what does dialup have to do with anything? What are you smoking?
OP had a stroke
i'm using an app to reach sh.itjust.works servers through an ISP i pay for. Why would firefox, for example, pay for any of this?
ISP's give us access to the Internet. And we pay them for it. Google makes money via ad aggregation. We already know they were able to do this without siphoning up all your data because they literally made money doing it before 2004 when they launched Gmail. What you're talking about already exists though. User subscriptions for Email, VPN's, Search Engines etc already exist and people are using them. People are paying for them.
People also generally understand that if they aren't paying for a service then they are the product. The thing is though, lots of those people are fine with ads so long as the ads don't get in the way of them enjoying the product. If I open a website they don't need to have a full page ad open up when the site page loads. But they do that anyway and that's what people are largely pushing back against.
Additionally, if these companies want our data? They should do a much better job of safeguarding it, or be held responsible in a meaningful way.
internets were there before Google. I'm sure there are many people on lemmy who remember google as a new search engine they tried.
internet would be different, like it was different, if these hogs like google and facebook are banned from collecting and selling user data. Fuck surveillance capitalism. (fuck capitalism while you're at it)
Do they need to? I don't think they do. They exist to make money so I get that they want to, and they're pretty good at it, but they could try not exploiting people for profit. But the idea that 'it exists therefore anything is justified in order to make a profit' is absurd.