[WarmWash]

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.

[NotMichaelBay]

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.

[bloak]

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.

[JumpCrisscross]

> 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?

[shimman]

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.

[kevin_thibedeau]

> control to the House of Representatives

There is an entire branch of government whose purpose is to execute the will of Congress.

[shimman]

Let me know if you find it because the Presidency is no different than a monarch. Might be more believable if the Presidency didn't have a pardon power and wasn't elected in an extremely undemocratic fashion.

[joquarky]

> it's the people's house

You dropped an adjective: wealthy

[shimman]

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.

[tastyfreeze]

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]

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.

[prmoustache]

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]

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]

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]

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]

> 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]

I have yet to see a native email client that offers search as fast and as capable as Gmail

[prmoustache]

Searcv in Gnome evolution is super fast

[data-ottawa]

The problem with ISP based email is once you're a customer with their email you can never switch.

[WarmWash]

Giving the state control of things to prevent the state from easily spying on people...

[intended]

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]

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]

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.

[Levitz]

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]

The “incentives of the people” are famously steadfast and resolute in favor of the rights of others.

[johnisgood]

Not only that, but were it State-implemented, it would be an AWFUL implementation all the way through.

[cgriswald]

People pay for things and are still spied on.

[WarmWash]

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]

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.

[danaris]

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).

[joquarky]

It's easy to say we should all start paying for things.

Most people don't have much of a disposable income.

[drnick1]

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.

[simpaticoder]

>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>

[intended]

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.