[gtowey]

At some point we have to get used to the idea that there are no such thing as free services. If you're not paying for something that clearly has a cost to the entity providing it, then value will be extracted from you in other ways.

[autoexec]

> If you're not paying for something that clearly has a cost to the entity providing it, then value will be extracted from you in other ways.

Then we should get used to the idea that even when you're paying a lot of money for something the entity taking your money will still do everything and anything to extract even more value from you including collecting and selling your data, remotely disabling features of the thing you paid for so they can start charging you a monthly fee to get them back, aggressively infesting the product with ads, pushing updates that degrade the service to incentivize you to upgrade, etc.

The greed of companies and their shareholders will never be satisfied so ultimately what we need are real consumer protections in the form of powerful regulation and enforcement.

[gtowey]

I agree. I'm not defending the current state of affairs by any means.

[like_any_other]

Paying the danegeld logic. They are more than happy to charge you money and spy on you. See Windows 11, Bambu printers making every print go through their cloud, smart TVs reporting on what you watch, cars tattling on where you're driving, and countless other examples.

[dfxm12]

This is true, but it's important to note that this will still likely happen for services you are paying for, too.

[piyuv]

Do you realize this thread is about a suicide preventation website? Can’t you separate between public services and profit-based ones?

[BobaFloutist]

I think the best-faith assumption was they were taking about the use of Google analytics. For the suicide prevention website, the value is the benefit to society of you not killing yourself.