Economically, there's something very strange going on with the net today. Aside from streaming video and perhaps some specialized apps like games, for the vast

Economically, there's something very strange going on with the net today. Aside from streaming video and perhaps some specialized apps like games, for the vast majority of people, they're just fine as long as they can move around a few MBs every day, mostly in text. Even photo sharing doesn't use a huge amount of data, relatively speaking. But to get to that paltry amount of data we actually need, we have to sift through 50, 100 times as much garbage, all of it related to engagement or advertising. For people who have transfer caps or end up in "jail" when they use too much internet, it puts them in a really odd place. We're charging them to pay for us to do things we want to do, not things they want to do on their own. Then, when we charge them, if we're lucky we reach our goal: more usage of our site or the user buying something they normally wouldn't, both of which involve spending even more money. This seems a bit like the old "heads I win, tails you lose" joke. There is an illusion of choice, but not really.