4 ms·

There is a phrase which I live by - If it's free, you're the product.

qzervaas 10y ago
That's all well and good - and many people realise and accept this - but the degree to which you're the product can clearly vary wildly. That's the real issue.
- rubicon33 10y ago
  Of course it varies. It's up to you to decide/deduce/infer what the "cost" of using a free service likely is. Understanding that there IS a cost is really the first step, one which a good portion of the population seems to not understand.
  - ianwalter 10y ago
    To be fair Unroll.me shows you ads in their emails to you so a user may think thats how they monetise and be ok with that. Its another thing altogether when the company sells all of your email data directly to buyers.
kkyryl 10y ago
I wish more people thought like that. with everything being free it's really hard to actually charge people for something.
Tanegashima 10y ago
Well, this site is free...what's the catch?
- ThrustVectoring 10y ago
  This is clearly and explicitly content marketing that attempts to fill YCombinator's venture capital deal funnel.
- kkyryl 10y ago
  we're definitely being watched and analyzed :)
- gogopuppygogo 10y ago
  We come for startup and tech news. YC is a startup and tech funding company that needs to have it's portfolio reach us as their customers/employees/investors/etc...
jen_h 10y ago
What bothers me is that this phrase becomes a thought-terminating cliche. Too often, it's used to shut down all conversations around corporate malfeasance re:privacy, so the industry doesn't get better, we all just move on to the next big story. And victims are blamed and shamed. "Your fault for using a free service, what did you expect?" vs. "This is unacceptable behavior, let's force a change." Not to mention so many don't understand free vs. non-free. Are there ads? Are there optional purchases that keep the company going? As someone else mentioned here, unroll.me showed ads, which would lead users to believe their usage was being subsidized by those ads - and Slice's About page on its web site says nothing about using unroll.me as a data source, it claims to use its own shopping app.

That's all well and good - and many people realise and accept this - but the degree to which you're the product can clearly vary wildly. That's the real issue.

rubicon33 10y ago
Of course it varies. It's up to you to decide/deduce/infer what the "cost" of using a free service likely is. Understanding that there IS a cost is really the first step, one which a good portion of the population seems to not understand.
- ianwalter 10y ago
  To be fair Unroll.me shows you ads in their emails to you so a user may think thats how they monetise and be ok with that. Its another thing altogether when the company sells all of your email data directly to buyers.

kkyryl 10y ago

I wish more people thought like that. with everything being free it's really hard to actually charge people for something.

Tanegashima 10y ago

Well, this site is free...what's the catch?

ThrustVectoring 10y ago
This is clearly and explicitly content marketing that attempts to fill YCombinator's venture capital deal funnel.
kkyryl 10y ago
we're definitely being watched and analyzed :)
gogopuppygogo 10y ago
We come for startup and tech news. YC is a startup and tech funding company that needs to have it's portfolio reach us as their customers/employees/investors/etc...

jen_h 10y ago

What bothers me is that this phrase becomes a thought-terminating cliche. Too often, it's used to shut down all conversations around corporate malfeasance re:privacy, so the industry doesn't get better, we all just move on to the next big story. And victims are blamed and shamed. "Your fault for using a free service, what did you expect?" vs. "This is unacceptable behavior, let's force a change." Not to mention so many don't understand free vs. non-free. Are there ads? Are there optional purchases that keep the company going? As someone else mentioned here, unroll.me showed ads, which would lead users to believe their usage was being subsidized by those ads - and Slice's About page on its web site says nothing about using unroll.me as a data source, it claims to use its own shopping app.