We all know the saying of if you are not paying then you are the product, which again became relevant with how Reddit is dealing with its business model and trying to get everyone into their dataharvesting for more ads ecosystem. It is really sad how many of the worlds brightest techminds are building technologies that in the end all leads to show more ads.
I have been online for over 25 years, so it is a hard expectation to break that everything should be free. Free email, free search, free news, free social media etc.
Given how much time many of us spend using various online services, paying a little seems reasonable. Yet I often tend to think way too long on even smaller digital expenses, like an app for €2, but I will happily pay €10 for a coffee and a croissant at a train station like it is nothing.
I have seen many saying they wouldn’t mind paying a bit for a good Reddit experience, and I think I could even be persuaded to pay for Facebook if it removed all the ads and let me control my feed again like we could in the beginning. Yet these companies don’t really seem interested in providing that option.
What services do you find worth paying for - even though free alternatives exists?
I have a neutral email provider, a todo app (Todoist), a journal app (DayOne), a podcast app (PocketCast) - as well as the usual plethora of streaming services. I have considered trying Kagi for a paid search engine, though that is really a hard pill to swallow when good search have always been there freely available. Though Googles quality have really gone down in recent years.
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The biggest, obvious one to me is news. Say what you will about mainstream media but some great investigative journalism still happens, and these companies are in an awkward position where no one wants to pay and everyone uses adblockers.
When I’m not living paycheck to paycheck I want to support Standard Ebooks (they’re doing a great job of showing how to make ebooks that don’t suck, check out their style guide) and maybe Neocities.
The more I think about how Medium works, the more I think it makes sense? While they could have done the typical thing where the people hosting content there pay for their share of the servers, by doing it in reverse the individual monthly cost can be lower (casting a wider net) and the people writing for them can actually get paid a bit for doing so.
I’m thinking about throwing some money at Obsidian, too, since I practically live in that app.
…Oh and obviously Fedora considering I rely on it to use my computer at all.
^On an unrelated note, how am I the first person to leave a comment?^
Totally agree on the news and journalism part. I subscribe to three different publications, which gets expensive, but it is worth it. Many newssites have also started to hide their articles behind paywalls, which is understandable, but also make sharing and discussing news with others on social media harder. And since most people can’t afford to subscribe to several news outlets, they will be limited in their exposure to different viewpoints - unless that particular newspaper is really good at challenging its readers and not just giving them what they think they want.
they will be limited in their exposure to different viewpoints - unless that particular newspaper is really good at challenging its readers and not just giving them what they think they want.
This is why I’m a big fan of Allsides. They seem genuinely dedicated to aggregating as wide a range of takes on current events as they can, which is really helpful for sniffing out BS. Honestly it’s mostly made me think there’s less BS than a lot of people think, so long as you can read past leading language.
This is the first I’ve heard of kagi. It looks interesting and I’m sick of scrolling past a page of “sponsored links”.
How have you found it?
I was using Neeva, a similar service. They shut down last month. People on the Neeva sub[…] Mentioned it. It’s quite a bit better than Neeva ever was.
I think it depends on the company.
If you think about paying big ones to have an ads-free experience, you have to keep in mind they still track you and sell metrics for ad targeting, that is they sell “your data” even if they don’t show you ads, why should I pay them if they don’t pay me for my data?
Different matter IMO if we talk about smaller companies (or small developers) that are still focused on providing a good service or app, I pay for protonmail for example, in some cases, paying a little bit might make a big difference to those developing.
Even more different if we talk about supporting opensource projects, that can’t be even considered “paying”, it’s donations to make it so those projects can go on since they don’t monetize them in any way.
I actually started giving my home Mastodon instance 8 bucks a month as a little “thank you” for hosting and maintaining it, because I think they’re doing a solid job at keeping the place wholesome and curbstomping less wholesome instances, and keeping it up and running.
Also, I pay the subscription for Home Assistant/Nabu Casa, because I think it’s worth for having a locally-hosted home automation platform that is completely independant from any cloud provider, but can make use of cloud features if need be. Yes, I could set up my own SSL certificate for the instance, and set up the connection to Google Home manually, and run a completely local TTS (which I actually have as a backup in case the connection drops), but there, I pay for the convenience on top of supporting the developers a little bit.
And before I switched to Jellyfin, I was happily using Plex and paid for the Plex Pass.
Yet I often tend to think way too long on even smaller digital expenses, like an app for €2, but I will happily pay €10 for a coffee and a croissant at a train station like it is nothing.
I think about this a lot too. I spend $10 on a drink I’ll never remember having months from now, but spend lots of time questioning whether it’s worth it pay for apps I use daily.
I regularly pay for a VPN, cloud storage, and music/video streaming. I find myself most willing to pay extra for no ads on streaming services I use a lot, even if I only pay for a month here or there (YouTube, Peacock, Hulu). I used to pay for Proton (VPN, Email, Cloud Storage, and Calendar) before iCloud implemented E2EE. Sometimes I’ll pay for news.
I find a lot of the apps I use I wouldn’t benefit from paying for extra features for, and if I would benefit from them, I wouldn’t have enough free time to use it to justify paying for it. A lot of my needs are covered by the free and/or stock apps.
I absolutely agree. Hell, I would pay some companies to not show up to me anymore.
I think the important thing is that our services should not REQUIRE you to pay monthly. Some people can afford to maintain these things but many cannot. A paywalled service is less useful for everyone, including those who can afford it.
I pay for Proton Unlimited (Email+vpn; ongoing), a couple of Android apps (once) and that’s it. The thing you said about spending 2$ on an app vs 10$ at the coffee stand is very relatable.
I would pay a reasonable amount to use Reddit if their true issue is not being profitable enough. If they lowered the API access fees to a reasonable figure, I would pay for a third party app. I would also pay for Reddit itself if it continued to allow third party access to the API like they have been. Maybe I’m in the minority, but if the argument is “if it’s free, then you’re the product” then I would, as dystopian as it sounds, pay for Reddit.
