it's the exact model that has taken over everything, just wearing a slightly different coloured hat. give you the item for free or at a discount, then desperat

it's the exact model that has taken over everything, just wearing a slightly different coloured hat. give you the item for free or at a discount, then desperately try to enslave you to their payment model people have been getting loans, mortgages and paying rent for centuries, but now it's moved onto phones, cars, apps, games, SAAS, free trials for streaming services, klarna, etc, etc, etc they're all some variation on rent-seeking behaviour, they just vary in the form rent takes, and how they put the product in your hands in the first place more modern iterations often don't forcibly take the rent, but use social pressures to coerce their userbase to the point where a % "voluntarily" pay rent. some still do forcibly take the rent. the end result for you is a product in your hands, nearly always for cheaper than it would have been 15 years ago, but at either a lower quality, or a higher future cost the end result for the "landlord" is almost a guarantee of projected earnings