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The only service he mentions by name is Protonmail, which has a free tier, which he doesn't mention. The pay version is about $7.50 USD a month, which is not co

The only service he mentions by name is Protonmail, which has a free tier, which he doesn't mention. The pay version is about $7.50 USD a month, which is not cost prohibitive if you care about it. His theory seems to be that if you have a bunch of these, they will add up. Maybe, but I can't buy the argument without more and better examples to back it up. I mean, if you had Protonmail and a $5/mo VPN, you'd still be spending less than the cost of a standard Netflix subscription. And if you stopped subscribing to Netflix because you cared about privacy, you'd be SAVING money. He does bring up a good point, which is that you need to have a certain amount of technical fluency to do this stuff. The other example he lists is the Pi-hole: does he think the cost of a $35 Raspberry Pi is what's keeping most people from running this software? That's not it at all: it's the obscurity of the project, and the knowledge it takes to set it up. There are plenty of people in the world for whom $35 is a big expense, but the number of people who are prevented from using one because of the cost is very low.

Scoundreller 5y ago
Yeah, I wouldn’t underestimate the cost of a fiduciary I can hire to train me and set it all up for me. Even that seems like a minefield where you might hire someone that sells you overpriced junk. But everything you mentioned sounds like maintaining privacy. What’s the time/domain knowledge cost of scrubbing all the crap that’s already there through umpteen opt-outs? Would make sense if a government body set up a website advising you what to do, or just make a lot of this crap completely illegal, but that would require a massive donation.
baliex 5y ago
> The pay version is about $7.50 USD a month, which is not cost prohibitive if you care about it. It’s possible for someone to care about privacy but not have the means to do anything about it. The fact that $7.50 a month _is_ cost prohibitive for some people is the point of the article.
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  GP's point is that it may be cost prohibitive to some but it's too cheap to be a marker of class in developed countries. It'd be like saying a Netflix subscription is a marker of class.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    I think if you added up all software you might need as paid, from MS Word to a VPN, cloud storage ala dropbox, password manager, imagine google searxh was a oaid service instead, etc. you would arrive at circa $100.
  - murgindrag 5y ago
    No, I think you overestimate the financial resources of about half of the people in the US. Being able to afford $90/year for each web service is definitely a marker of class. That's even more true globally. And yes, Netflix is hard on some people too. I know plenty of people not in the software engineer class who (illegally) share Netflix subscriptions or don't have them at all.
pydry 5y ago
>The pay version is about $7.50 USD a month, which is not cost prohibitive if you care about it. $7.50 x number of online services you rely upon It's quickly becomes a lot.

Scoundreller 5y ago

Yeah, I wouldn’t underestimate the cost of a fiduciary I can hire to train me and set it all up for me. Even that seems like a minefield where you might hire someone that sells you overpriced junk. But everything you mentioned sounds like maintaining privacy. What’s the time/domain knowledge cost of scrubbing all the crap that’s already there through umpteen opt-outs? Would make sense if a government body set up a website advising you what to do, or just make a lot of this crap completely illegal, but that would require a massive donation.

baliex 5y ago

> The pay version is about $7.50 USD a month, which is not cost prohibitive if you care about it. It’s possible for someone to care about privacy but not have the means to do anything about it. The fact that $7.50 a month _is_ cost prohibitive for some people is the point of the article.

fighterpilot 5y ago
GP's point is that it may be cost prohibitive to some but it's too cheap to be a marker of class in developed countries. It'd be like saying a Netflix subscription is a marker of class.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  I think if you added up all software you might need as paid, from MS Word to a VPN, cloud storage ala dropbox, password manager, imagine google searxh was a oaid service instead, etc. you would arrive at circa $100.
- murgindrag 5y ago
  No, I think you overestimate the financial resources of about half of the people in the US. Being able to afford $90/year for each web service is definitely a marker of class. That's even more true globally. And yes, Netflix is hard on some people too. I know plenty of people not in the software engineer class who (illegally) share Netflix subscriptions or don't have them at all.

pydry 5y ago

>The pay version is about $7.50 USD a month, which is not cost prohibitive if you care about it. $7.50 x number of online services you rely upon It's quickly becomes a lot.