4 ms·

Its an intractable problem because people now have a general expectation that everything is "free". Look at Kagi's success and compare it to Google. It doesn't

Its an intractable problem because people now have a general expectation that everything is "free". Look at Kagi's success and compare it to Google. It doesn't even register. People need to start paying for things, because if you're not paying for it, you're not in control of it.

bloak 9mo ago
Alternatively, basic stuff like e-mail and payment processing should be provided by the state. After all, the state provides a road network, which is similarly essential and rather more expensive.
- WarmWash 9mo ago
  Giving the state control of things to prevent the state from easily spying on people...
  - intended 9mo ago
    This is the likely direction things are going. The US government can decide that EU officials are out of favor, and then those officials are locked out of Office/Gsuite. Getting away from American tech has become an actual national security issue. Ideally you would still have private enterprise create alternatives, but it’s easy to imagine that email, social media will simply be built for citizens by their government.
    - WarmWash 9mo ago
      I'm curious the caliber of engineer that will turn down a $175k/yr Microsoft job to take a $45k/yr Government Office of Software job...
      - intended 9mo ago
        There seem to be many layoffs, and the hype say that AI has made coders redundant. Who knows? Perhaps you won’t have to depend on the many people who would happily take lower pay for the chance to contribute to their nation. There’s more incentives than pure profit - Government seems capable enough to attract people when it comes to cyber weapons. Governments aren’t currently making these tools, because until last year, private enterprise was good enough. It still is, minus the dependency on America and its political climate. Personally - The issue isn’t engineer availability or salary, but committee based decision making.
  - johnisgood 9mo ago
    Not only that, but were it State-implemented, it would be an AWFUL implementation all the way through.
  - Levitz 9mo ago
    The neat thing about the state is that it can act directly off the incentives of the people. The state can supply such service in a private manner, given enough support from the populace.
    - cgriswald 9mo ago
      The “incentives of the people” are famously steadfast and resolute in favor of the rights of others.
- prmoustache 9mo ago
  E-mail used to be provided by your isp and there were enough different ISPs ( at least in my country ) to not have a duopoly.
  - SoftTalker 9mo ago
    Yes, but they didn't develop it. ISP email required you to configure IMAP or more likely POP in an email application and did nothing to combat spam. Google came along and offered gmail, easy sign up, no configuration, used your web browser so no other applications to install, spam largely filtered out, just worked.
    - prmoustache 9mo ago
      The app to install wasn't really an issue given any OS with a default desktop came with an email app. What brought the popularity of gmail was the huge space provided which at the time felt infinite. I still remember the counter that was showing the size increasing seemingly indefinitely.
      - SoftTalker 9mo ago
        Yes, that too. I think the initial sell was a 1GB mailbox. Which was an enormous limit at the time. And another thing the ISPs missed. Most had small limits, "mailbox full" was a common thing and you had to download/delete mail all the time which was annoying.
    - drnick1 9mo ago
      > used your web browser so no other applications to install I see this as a downside. Native email clients are much faster and a far better UX than a Web inbox. It's also pretty much required if you juggle multiple accounts.
      - warkdarrior 9mo ago
        I have yet to see a native email client that offers search as fast and as capable as Gmail
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
  > basic stuff like e-mail and payment processing should be provided by the state You're looking at America in 2026 and concluding we want to give the state more control over private lives?
  - tastyfreeze 9mo ago
    The more you ask around the more you will find the real divide in the US is the same as it always has been. There are those that believe a more powerful government will solve all the problems and those that just want the government to leave them alone to solve their own problems. Thomas Sowell's Conflict of Visions describes the difference well.
    - wredcoll 9mo ago
      You make a really good point I think, if the government just leaves us alone then we can solve all of our own problems with the friendly assistance of ma bell/standard oil/google/facebook.
  - shimman 9mo ago
    Yes, you can give control to the House of Representatives. The House should have way more control over government agencies, it's the people's house. The people deserve to have control.
    - joquarky 9mo ago
      > it's the people's house You dropped an adjective: wealthy
      - shimman 9mo ago
        No, the Senate, Presidency, and Legislative branches are for the wealthy. The constitution was literally written so a minority of rich people would have the most control over the government. Having state legislatures (who also happened to decide who can vote + how) choose senators, requiring the senate to pass bills written by the house, judges that are chosen by senators. House of reps only serve for 2 years compared to 6 or 4 or lifetime appointments. The 17th amendment is a little over 100 years old. People need to stop treating the US constitution as this "mythical" thing rather than the reality of it being a very undemocratic document that is highly resistant to change. Luckily the house can be expanded with a simple majority IN the house, one way to truly combat this.
simpaticoder 9mo ago
>People need to start paying for things ...with money. They are already paying for things by violating their own privacy and those around them. The irony is that the amount of money required for the service is much less the expected value of the surveillance for the provider. Service payment is an insurance expense, protecting against individual and systematic violation of the 4th Amendment rights. It's insurance (and cheap insurance) because this usually doesn't matter in practice. But sometimes it does, and when it does it REALLY does matter. <tinfoil_hat>It would be smart for surveillance capital to fund some of these privacy forward providers, steer them to both charge you for a service and violate your privacy, hope for a very public controversy, and eventually discredit the fundamental approach.</tinfoil_hat>
cgriswald 9mo ago
People pay for things and are still spied on.
- WarmWash 9mo ago
  People wear seatbelts and still die too. We need to move in the right direction, not get paralysis in the status quo because of high profile edge cases. No matter what there will always be warrants and wire taps. The goal is to get away from the "free flow" of information.
  - cgriswald 9mo ago
    The point is, paying for things isn’t a solution. Paying for things is a consequence of having fixed the problem. I pay for Kagi and buy groceries from a ma-and-pa grocery store where I’m still going to be tracked if I use a credit card, bring my phone (or go with someone else who brings their phone), drive certain cars… In most cases there can’t be movement in this direction and to the degree there can be, it isn’t enough.
- sieabahlpark 9mo ago
  [dead]
intended 9mo ago
We could - regulate the crap out of surveillance capitalism. - enforce laws on the books - Break up firms Tech used to have a leg to stand on in the face of government over reach. Today, tech firms have largely adapted to the incentives that actually make themselves known every quarter. Customer support, content moderation, compliance are avoided, and lobbying argues that if you dont let tech it easy, your economy wont innovate. Except enshittification is the term to describe how extractive mature tech markets become. I am all for more subscription models, but this shouldn’t come at the cost of throwing our hands up and ignoring the many changes that can better align the current incentives.
danaris 9mo ago
And the problem with that is, all the money has been siphoned off by the people at the top. That's one of the big hidden factors driving the ad/surveillance economy: people's purchasing power just isn't what it used to be, while at the same time they're expected to be paying regularly for more things than ever before (home broadband, mobile phone plans, etc).
NotMichaelBay 9mo ago
I see what you're saying but I don't think that's the answer for everything, because people also pay for conveniences, like a Ring subscription so that Amazon stores footage in their cloud for you. The problem is centralization is more convenient for consumers. You can easily control your doorbell, your garage door, your security cameras with 1 app, and everything just works. Open source and decentralized solutions need to be just as convenient and cheaper than centralized ones for consumers to choose them.
joquarky 9mo ago
It's easy to say we should all start paying for things. Most people don't have much of a disposable income.
drnick1 9mo ago
DuckDuckGo is free to use, and is proof that you can have privacy respecting search. They make their money like Google used to by selling rankings, not by having users log in so that they can be followed across all their devices.

bloak 9mo ago

Alternatively, basic stuff like e-mail and payment processing should be provided by the state. After all, the state provides a road network, which is similarly essential and rather more expensive.

WarmWash 9mo ago
Giving the state control of things to prevent the state from easily spying on people...
- intended 9mo ago
  This is the likely direction things are going. The US government can decide that EU officials are out of favor, and then those officials are locked out of Office/Gsuite. Getting away from American tech has become an actual national security issue. Ideally you would still have private enterprise create alternatives, but it’s easy to imagine that email, social media will simply be built for citizens by their government.
  - WarmWash 9mo ago
    I'm curious the caliber of engineer that will turn down a $175k/yr Microsoft job to take a $45k/yr Government Office of Software job...
    - intended 9mo ago
      There seem to be many layoffs, and the hype say that AI has made coders redundant. Who knows? Perhaps you won’t have to depend on the many people who would happily take lower pay for the chance to contribute to their nation. There’s more incentives than pure profit - Government seems capable enough to attract people when it comes to cyber weapons. Governments aren’t currently making these tools, because until last year, private enterprise was good enough. It still is, minus the dependency on America and its political climate. Personally - The issue isn’t engineer availability or salary, but committee based decision making.
- johnisgood 9mo ago
  Not only that, but were it State-implemented, it would be an AWFUL implementation all the way through.
- Levitz 9mo ago
  The neat thing about the state is that it can act directly off the incentives of the people. The state can supply such service in a private manner, given enough support from the populace.
  - cgriswald 9mo ago
    The “incentives of the people” are famously steadfast and resolute in favor of the rights of others.
prmoustache 9mo ago
E-mail used to be provided by your isp and there were enough different ISPs ( at least in my country ) to not have a duopoly.
- SoftTalker 9mo ago
  Yes, but they didn't develop it. ISP email required you to configure IMAP or more likely POP in an email application and did nothing to combat spam. Google came along and offered gmail, easy sign up, no configuration, used your web browser so no other applications to install, spam largely filtered out, just worked.
  - prmoustache 9mo ago
    The app to install wasn't really an issue given any OS with a default desktop came with an email app. What brought the popularity of gmail was the huge space provided which at the time felt infinite. I still remember the counter that was showing the size increasing seemingly indefinitely.
    - SoftTalker 9mo ago
      Yes, that too. I think the initial sell was a 1GB mailbox. Which was an enormous limit at the time. And another thing the ISPs missed. Most had small limits, "mailbox full" was a common thing and you had to download/delete mail all the time which was annoying.
  - drnick1 9mo ago
    > used your web browser so no other applications to install I see this as a downside. Native email clients are much faster and a far better UX than a Web inbox. It's also pretty much required if you juggle multiple accounts.
    - warkdarrior 9mo ago
      I have yet to see a native email client that offers search as fast and as capable as Gmail
JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
> basic stuff like e-mail and payment processing should be provided by the state You're looking at America in 2026 and concluding we want to give the state more control over private lives?
- tastyfreeze 9mo ago
  The more you ask around the more you will find the real divide in the US is the same as it always has been. There are those that believe a more powerful government will solve all the problems and those that just want the government to leave them alone to solve their own problems. Thomas Sowell's Conflict of Visions describes the difference well.
  - wredcoll 9mo ago
    You make a really good point I think, if the government just leaves us alone then we can solve all of our own problems with the friendly assistance of ma bell/standard oil/google/facebook.
- shimman 9mo ago
  Yes, you can give control to the House of Representatives. The House should have way more control over government agencies, it's the people's house. The people deserve to have control.
  - joquarky 9mo ago
    > it's the people's house You dropped an adjective: wealthy
    - shimman 9mo ago
      No, the Senate, Presidency, and Legislative branches are for the wealthy. The constitution was literally written so a minority of rich people would have the most control over the government. Having state legislatures (who also happened to decide who can vote + how) choose senators, requiring the senate to pass bills written by the house, judges that are chosen by senators. House of reps only serve for 2 years compared to 6 or 4 or lifetime appointments. The 17th amendment is a little over 100 years old. People need to stop treating the US constitution as this "mythical" thing rather than the reality of it being a very undemocratic document that is highly resistant to change. Luckily the house can be expanded with a simple majority IN the house, one way to truly combat this.

simpaticoder 9mo ago

>People need to start paying for things ...with money. They are already paying for things by violating their own privacy and those around them. The irony is that the amount of money required for the service is much less the expected value of the surveillance for the provider. Service payment is an insurance expense, protecting against individual and systematic violation of the 4th Amendment rights. It's insurance (and cheap insurance) because this usually doesn't matter in practice. But sometimes it does, and when it does it REALLY does matter. <tinfoil_hat>It would be smart for surveillance capital to fund some of these privacy forward providers, steer them to both charge you for a service and violate your privacy, hope for a very public controversy, and eventually discredit the fundamental approach.</tinfoil_hat>

cgriswald 9mo ago

People pay for things and are still spied on.

WarmWash 9mo ago
People wear seatbelts and still die too. We need to move in the right direction, not get paralysis in the status quo because of high profile edge cases. No matter what there will always be warrants and wire taps. The goal is to get away from the "free flow" of information.
- cgriswald 9mo ago
  The point is, paying for things isn’t a solution. Paying for things is a consequence of having fixed the problem. I pay for Kagi and buy groceries from a ma-and-pa grocery store where I’m still going to be tracked if I use a credit card, bring my phone (or go with someone else who brings their phone), drive certain cars… In most cases there can’t be movement in this direction and to the degree there can be, it isn’t enough.
sieabahlpark 9mo ago
[dead]

intended 9mo ago

We could - regulate the crap out of surveillance capitalism. - enforce laws on the books - Break up firms Tech used to have a leg to stand on in the face of government over reach. Today, tech firms have largely adapted to the incentives that actually make themselves known every quarter. Customer support, content moderation, compliance are avoided, and lobbying argues that if you dont let tech it easy, your economy wont innovate. Except enshittification is the term to describe how extractive mature tech markets become. I am all for more subscription models, but this shouldn’t come at the cost of throwing our hands up and ignoring the many changes that can better align the current incentives.

danaris 9mo ago

And the problem with that is, all the money has been siphoned off by the people at the top. That's one of the big hidden factors driving the ad/surveillance economy: people's purchasing power just isn't what it used to be, while at the same time they're expected to be paying regularly for more things than ever before (home broadband, mobile phone plans, etc).

NotMichaelBay 9mo ago

I see what you're saying but I don't think that's the answer for everything, because people also pay for conveniences, like a Ring subscription so that Amazon stores footage in their cloud for you. The problem is centralization is more convenient for consumers. You can easily control your doorbell, your garage door, your security cameras with 1 app, and everything just works. Open source and decentralized solutions need to be just as convenient and cheaper than centralized ones for consumers to choose them.

joquarky 9mo ago

It's easy to say we should all start paying for things. Most people don't have much of a disposable income.

drnick1 9mo ago

DuckDuckGo is free to use, and is proof that you can have privacy respecting search. They make their money like Google used to by selling rankings, not by having users log in so that they can be followed across all their devices.