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It’s very interesting and telling that most of the technology that connects us does not have us as a customer, or a financial beneficiary. One of the key aspect
by laurex 3y ago
It’s very interesting and telling that most of the technology that connects us does not have us as a customer, or a financial beneficiary. One of the key aspects of technofeudalism is the extractive nature of most of our platforms.
- klipt 3y agoBecause given the choice it seems many people prefer free with ads to paid? I'm just thankful that mobile phone networks haven't switched to a "free with ads interspersed into your texts" model yet. (Of course there are still ads in my texts, but at least those are officially spam rather than network endorsed.)
- laurex 3y agoThis is an argument for standards. You can switch messaging clients. Platforms own you.
- KRAKRISMOTT 3y agoYes, and ̶G̶m̶a̶i̶l̶ email is such a successful example.
- NoraCodes 3y agoIt is. I switched away from Gmail; many have.
- kelnos 3y agoSame, but I realize that nearly everyone I correspond with uses Gmail, so Google has all my emails regardless. (Ok, they don't get my transactional email, since those are usually sent through something like Sendgrid, but... yeah.)
- aleph_minus_one 3y ago> Same, but I realize that nearly everyone I correspond with uses Gmail, so Google has all my emails regardless. I know some very privacy-focused person (a friend of mine) who will stop being willing to be in contact with you (or being your friend) if you use an email address at one of these big spying email providers to write him an email. So, it is just a matter of being consequential.
- thereisnospork 3y agoImagine if the progenitors of email thought to require e-stamps, say a thousand emails for a buck. There's a parallel universe where 'Email co.' is a major tech player comparable to Google. Not sure it's a better universe, but bears consideration.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoIn the late 1980s, I worked for a company that wanted to do exactly that. It was an X.400-based nightmare, and never took off.
- unholythree 3y agoI remember a joke (or conspiracy theory) from the 90’s that the US Postal Service wanted to charge people per email.
- lacrimacida 3y agoMaybe not USPS but it would be okay to pay for it somehow to make it harder for scammers, spammers and other harbingers of ruin.
- StreetChief 3y agoThis effectively does exist https://www.jpay.com/PEmessages.aspx https://www.jpay.com/PEmessages.aspx
- steveklabnik 3y agoIt is always so tragic to me that, for over a decade, I would have paid for Twitter. But by the time they rolled that out, enough had changed that there's no way I was going to pay for Twitter. Market timing is hard.
- MomoXenosaga 3y agoActually they tried. WhatsApp fucked them up. Literally in a span of months SMS usage went the way of the dinosaur.
- renewiltord 3y agoThat's a customer choice. Metafilter charges money and there are others that do as well.