5 ms·

Without trying to dismiss your opinion: Was the internet before Google/ad-tech not "open, free (as in beer)"?

• riversflow 3y ago
  Well it certainly wasn’t equitable, connected computers were the realm of the rich. The problem with free services is scaling them to significant portions of the entire population.
  • phatfish 3y ago
    My family wasn't rich and we had a "connected computer" in 97/98 before ad-tech really took over. Getting online was far less costly than the computer itself.
    • mcmoor 3y ago
      Damn an in my country (Indonesia) even in 2010 it's still the other way around. Even to this day I can't see my fellow countrymen paid for anything online partly because everything used to be so expensive we always have to find cheaper (pirated) version. By comparison privacy is worthless (for us).
    • Cyph0n 3y ago
      Did you also have access to free email (beyond a measly few MBs), maps, video hosting, and private data storage? Because that's what ad-tech enabled. Getting online wasn't the hard part. Not saying that ad-tech is purely good, of course.