Listen I am all for these big tech companies losing the users but I don't think this was the reason why they wrote this comment or my understanding of it

My understanding of the parent comment and the comment above the parent comment was that the grand comment was frustrated on why things can't be subscription based internet instead of a sneaky ad tech which invades our privacy.

The comment responding to it basically said that it isn't profitable. Users just don't sign up and growth / stock profit matters to the company and so that is the reason why the world is the way it is right now with so privacy invasive ad spyware tech

Now, you want to pass laws to force the bloated companies to lose users, so deep down you are saying that losing users is unprofitable for them and that a subscription based model just wouldn't work for the internet which the grand parent comment wanted / preferred and many people do.

I might not be able to explain it but in just 3 different comments of different people, we might have gotten a justification as to why the internet is the way it is right now

Companies don't want to lose users or money :) which is why they turn to spyware. Now I am not for big tech at all but we need to understand them, we need to realize how this economy of privacy works to fix / liberate ourselves.

And also I think that a lot of these companies just pay fines when they do in fact breach any laws as for them its just a drop of bucket and there is very few amount of times that a company is genuinely punished reasonably and I am not even sure the last time that it happened...

but this is exactly why they spy on us, for profit and how we don't really pay for subscriptions or even let alone the idea of signing up or adding credit card details.

I feel somewhere somehow along the way, we got entitled to everything and we stopped paying for internet services and we started paying with our privacy. There is a point to be made that we live a world where evil adware no matter how much we might comment here is still more profitable sometimes than subscription for a lot of companies and so somehow I do think that its a bit of both on us and taking responsibility ourselves might help us too instead of just dunking them Completely on big tech.

I also think that open source is a good example of this, I just don't understand why people would much rather pay with their ads which might scam them or they might pay for subscription based software and not donate to an open source software.

We as a society complain about open source sometimes not being as good as closed source but why would it if we as a society don't fund it and open source is in a dire state of underfunding, how do we as a society then feel entitled of good quality open source...

The system is a bit broken and it starts from all of us I suppose.

Since the point of these comments on these websites to me seems to be to try to bring change imo otherwhere there is no point in discussing and I want to take it in that direction...

Like, The point I want to really ask is, do people care? Aside from the people here who might be passionate about it, but is there a way that the masses can be taught about such things in a way that they start caring?

Is there a way that we can show people how insane these companies track you all across the internet and how insane big tech is to the general public so that they might care and look at open source or any things like donations / subscriptions as a healthy medium and start taking part in it instead of being into yet another adware software part.

What are some mechanisms to help people share this knowledge I suppose?

Who will share this message of cutting the hand of algorithm when the algorithm is feeding the people the slop and people are eating it. The algorithm wouldn't listen, it wouldn't bother. We might need to think of something else and I just wanted to discuss it here if its alright.

I don't think it's that companies want the ad model, it's that they know they cannot compete with it if they have a subscription model.

Nebula, the "answer" to the shittyness of youtube that creators have been falling over themselves to promote for the last 5 years, still has a conversion rate under 1%.

People hate ads, but they really really hate subscriptions.

A good approach would be that usage means you gotta offer storage or bandwidth in some way. Very very difficult to implement, but say for a PeerTube: wanna watch it? Offer a small percentage of storage for storing chunks. Be a part of the system you use. Of course, the more services you use, the more resources you give up. Or you subscribe.

I can understand if people can't pay for subscriptions. I am not talking from first world citizen and I understand that, this is very real.

If I can be honest, in an ideal world we would have something like patreon and the likes and people sharing their videos on something like peertube and other mechanisms.

I don't want to gatekeep content behind a subscription so that people would be unable to access a community or content when the economy might be out of their hands and they don't want to pay for a subscription but I just wish if more people who do have the means to help and wouldn't be financially impacted much by donating actually do that more often / more as that would be the ideal world but maybe the question is if we can ever reach that or would that always remain an ideal and that we are just stuck with the things in current form.

Nebula just didn’t have enough content I cared about. I happily paid for it, but outside of one or two creators it was “meh.” Half of it felt like content specifically for elementary schoolers. So I, being childless, eventually canceled it. That said, I should probably give it another go, to see if that’s improved at all.

Personally, I really don’t think the problem is subscriptions at this point. I think it’s just having enough content to justify the subscription. Netflix probably costs 4x what Nebula does but certainly has at least that much more content.

I subscribe to Disney/Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube premium. I’ve tried others but there’s not enough content to justify the monthly expense unless I’m actively watching something. And Disney/Hulu is next on the chopping block because the content sort of sucks, there are large periods of time where nothing I want to watch is released, and the whole thing with Kimmel.

Oh yes I agree that they don't want to

My feeling is that this arrangement is massively negative for people and since we ostensibly live in a democracy we should fix it and they can go fuck themselves.

I have edited a bit of the comment and can appreciate it if you read it again but as I have said in some other comments too, there is a social contract between the govt and the citizens and that the citizens should balance / check the govt's rights sometimes and vice versa with judiciary playing a big role too.

another issue which might be is that we are living in a democracy but our options are limited because of the money that flows into these elections.

Is it truly a democracy if its just two options and in my opinion, there is very little that both parties do to fundamentally drastically change the system because of both of them are funded by money donations from large corporations mostly...

They are just different flavours and one might be more preferred than the other for obvious options but even that is not enough and there might be a need for something radical if we truly want to call ourselves democracy and fight against an oligarchy and the sheer influence that big tech has.

I think that we definitely might need to do something as the rights of citizens if we feel like the govt is favouring the big tech or taking decisions that aren't in our interests but that takes real energy but that might be the best way moving forward I am just not sure.

We definitely need some radical change for the economy too and the influence that big tech has. In my opinion we have fought for less and won yet this things seems so hidden that nobody discusses it in real life except here and maybe its hidden because some people might be scared of having all people be educated about this topic as its not in their interests.

To me, I am not sure mate but a lot of the times, to me it seems that people have given hope on radical change, they have accepted things, they have accepted being spied upon so much that they don't even think about it. But as I said in my previous comment that there is definitely a scope of discussion / real change in this I suppose too.