Hi Timothy,
# Timothy Pearson [2017-11-29 20:25 +0100]:
Yes, I agree. The question is, in a society where any new features / ways of doing things are expected at no cost or well below the real cost of creating things, how does society as a whole move away from the resultant need to "monetise" the resulting products in unethical ways?
No answer to your question but some additional thoughts:
If you were talking only about web services, I'd understand. But in other areas technical products sometimes are obviously overpriced and people seem to tolerate, understand and/or even respect that. Examples: Apple products or some popular proprietary software like MS Office or Adobe stuff.
The only difference to the "no-cost" web services like social networks is that they are paid by the users' data and privacy – hard to quantify but I'd say this is overpriced, too.
Best, Max