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This idea makes sense, empirically. There is a cost to provide internet, and low-income individuals may be more willing to provide a combination of valuable ass
by greedyliberal 10y ago
This idea makes sense, empirically. There is a cost to provide internet, and low-income individuals may be more willing to provide a combination of valuable assets (cash & data), while higher income individuals would be willing to provide more cash in exchange for no data.
Regardless, the end payment is the same, it's just a question about how you want to pay.
Edit: For those who think this may be a money grab, remember that the government is getting tax revenue out of the profits ISPs make from monetizing your data. While the ethics of this are debatable, the alternative is zero additional government revenue. So the ethics of privacy need to be weighed against the ethics of providing programs for communities that could be beneficial.
- ehsankia 10y agoIf they provide a decent free connection (at least 10/2), and support it buy collecting your data, then fine. But to force it on people who pay for a connection makes zero sense.
- thatcat 10y agoIsps already have an obligation to run lines to low income areas and are required to offer lowered income / lower speed tiers. This just subsidises it so that they make more money from another source.
- mfringel 10y agoBut that's not how services are priced... you can't guarantee that how/what a private entity will cross-subsidize. The whole point of a Universal Service Fund (for telephony) is that there was no motivation for this kind of monetization. As for the gov't getting tax revenue from selling the information, that's just unpersuasive. First, it's an incredibly indirect way of getting the revenue, and second that could be used to justify any profit-making activity, which makes it meaningless.