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Every time this conversation comes up, someone on Hacker News says "You can pay someone for that, it only costs about $5 a month." Every time. And then someone

Every time this conversation comes up, someone on Hacker News says "You can pay someone for that, it only costs about $5 a month." Every time. And then someone points out "$5 a month is a lot, even for some people in the developed world, and very much so in South America, Africa, and much of Asia." $5 a month is far too expensive for most of the world, which is why so much of humanity is now in the walled-gardens like Facebook. So if we want to find a way to destroy the walled-gardens, we're going to have to find an approach that is orders of magnitude cheaper than $5 a month.

wwweston 4y ago
$5 isn't THE number. It's a number that's meant to illustrate a monthly outlay on the order of a meal -- something big enough that it might not fall below the level of consideration for some people (I can certainly remember when it was something I had to think about), but small enough that people with an income level that makes them food-secure can probably swing it. As for other places where 5 USD is a lot of money for reasons of currency and local economic conditions, they'd probably have their own markets and pricing on the order of a meal for a month of service. Any amount will always be a sacrifice compared to free, but given that "free" actually has a cost in terms of privacy, attention, and even baseline function of the tool, there's really no free lunch here, just the currency you want to pay in. Making it actual currency lines up certain incentives better. Even if it doesn't solve the problem among, say, food insecure.
- lkrubner 4y ago
  "given that free actually has a cost in terms of privacy, attention" Why? You're assuming your conclusion. A different protocol can have different starting assumptions.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
A $3/mo vps can serve tens or even hundreds of blogs. Static hosting is even cheaper. This should really be a function of libraries. Then there's fediverse or even briar or manyverse that work without internet.

wwweston 4y ago

$5 isn't THE number. It's a number that's meant to illustrate a monthly outlay on the order of a meal -- something big enough that it might not fall below the level of consideration for some people (I can certainly remember when it was something I had to think about), but small enough that people with an income level that makes them food-secure can probably swing it. As for other places where 5 USD is a lot of money for reasons of currency and local economic conditions, they'd probably have their own markets and pricing on the order of a meal for a month of service. Any amount will always be a sacrifice compared to free, but given that "free" actually has a cost in terms of privacy, attention, and even baseline function of the tool, there's really no free lunch here, just the currency you want to pay in. Making it actual currency lines up certain incentives better. Even if it doesn't solve the problem among, say, food insecure.

lkrubner 4y ago
"given that free actually has a cost in terms of privacy, attention" Why? You're assuming your conclusion. A different protocol can have different starting assumptions.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

A $3/mo vps can serve tens or even hundreds of blogs. Static hosting is even cheaper. This should really be a function of libraries. Then there's fediverse or even briar or manyverse that work without internet.