Well one could argue Google and FB services are not free. Those 2 companies are 2 of the most profitable, valuable companies in the world. If they are providing their services for free, how can that be? Our attention and information is what they profit from, and that should not be undervalued. They are certainly not providing these services to us out of the goodness of their hearts.
> Well one could argue Google and FB services are not free.
I don't possibly see how. The services cost no money, thus they are unequivocally free. Perhaps one could reasonably argue that just because something is free doesn't mean the user isn't entitled to any rights, but torturing the definition of free to suit your argument strikes me as obviously fallacious.
> If they are providing their services for free, how can that be
Because advertisers pay them. This logic is like saying FM radio isn't free because it has ads, this is just not true.
I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment but I don't think this will hold up in case of account deletions or bans.
Let say your 'attention', using the service, is used to pay for 'goods', account/ access to service.
How is the revenue derived fron 'attention'? By the attention being spent on preselected content, e.g. ads, that are choosen by the platform. One could argue that revoking access to a service from the platform side is okay since the attention is not being 'spent' after the removal or ban.
It might be feasible to expect that services, like an email account, are not taken away abitrarly but 'just because it's profitable' is not a sound argument. Making yourself dependent on a platform is not the problem of the platform.
Those services are the payment to you. You are selling your attention to google and Facebook for email/social network access and they then time slice that attention and sell it to advertisers.
If you use Google’s free email, you are not their customer. If you have an AdWords account, you are.
If you don’t like the deal, start charging them money or stop giving your attention to them for what you get in return. It’s that simple.
