[occultist_throw]

Indeed.

Any service online, where you do not explicitly pay money for goods/services rendered, you can rest assured that you are paying with data or influence (advertisement).

HN is no different. They control the news, and how the news is displayed. They run the YCombinator venture capital fund. You do not pay them, but they control influence (advertising). I would expect different if I paid YC for news access... But I dont.

[drewmol]

That line is increasingly blurred. Premium(payed) services also data mine, and I find it increasingly difficult to tell to what extent. As long as you collect a trove of data, and that data has market value, I generally expect it to be sold/used for profit. Edit: grammar

[brodock]

Middleground alternative is to have a non profit behind the "free service". This works relatively well for some opensource critical resources like rubygems.org which has a foundation paying the bills, sponsored by companies. I think there are other good examples.

Problem is that social networks are hard to build, and tech people behind efforts like Diaspora, while they may understand the tech part, can't make something appealing enough for grandma or everage joe.