Start Paying for Internet Stuff

While I get the sentiment of being more aggressive with pricing, this is a recipe for destruction. If customers are not put off, they find the offering valuable enough to them to keep buying it. Customers are put off in general when you overpower that agreement. A similar sentiment when a company will jack up their prices and you don't feel there's additional value being added, so you unsubscribe.

The argument about Google making email free doesn't quite add up. Email should be accessible to everyone, and I think we all agree on this. Especially those applying for jobs at the local library who may be on hard times.

I think the argument of great products being free is that they are "more accessible". If you want premium products, then buy them. Not every company needs to give into corporate greed when they have enough to continue growing. Too much of a premium and you have a walled garden. Choose wisely.

I do pay for services for which trustworthy providers exist (mail, vps, git, small software, indie game studios).

I also put 50 dollars a month aside to donate to various open source projects I enjoy, because they are valuable to me, and the money actually goes to the devs.

I would gladly pay for many "mainstream" services as well, if I actually became a customer by doing so.

Unfortunately most large corporations will still track me, abuse my data, show me ads and spam (and distribute) my mail address and phone number even if I pay them. Hell, even TV manufacturers started doing this crap.

Many large scale IT companies don't even want to build a sustainable business. Why pay those? If one of them goes down a replacement will pop up, their value typically only comes from a large userbase, which doubles as the only reason for a lack of alternatives.

In many cases they even create negative value for me due to factors like peer pressure.

Take my money and then leave me alone. If you refuse to do that, it typically means I'm the one creating and providing value nowadays. And then it becomes highly debatable which one of us two deserves to get paid here.

It's still a work in progress but it's aimed squarely at the issues raised in the article.

In my opinion, the real key and the primary focus should be on a single, secure, widely accepted internet currency with very low transaction fees. This is obviously easier said than done. I don't think Bitcoin really fits the bill. Maybe Ethereum or something like Polkadot if they can somehow get enough service providers to coalesce around it.

Right now, the defacto currency of the internet is privacy. And it's main selling point is simplicity --- out of sight and out of mind for most people. If every service provider tries to roll their own payment system, it will quickly become too complicated and a security nightmare that Joe User will just avoid.

If you don't give up your personal data, they won't have anything to sell.

Enabling users to subscribe without personal data is part of the idea behind Web3.