this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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Privacy
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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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Do you realize that this means supporting an ad-driven business model (in general, for proton your ability to use the services for free is thanks to paying users), which in turns is what incentives data collection and privacy violations, right?
Also mail has a slightly higher moving cost than other services, where "changing" is usually three clicks to cancel the subscription and be done with it.
So my take is that (if you can afford it) paying for services incentivises healthy business models for services, that helps develop tools that don't harm users (to serve advertisers). The alternative is worse than paying money to a company with a guy who expressed an opinion we disagree with IMHO, but you do you.
Not really, or rather it's not me doing it. Free tier does not really incentivize data collection, nowadays even the business where you are paying still collect and sell information about you and you can't trust they are not doing so (or turn heel behind your back) without high level access to their infrastructure.
I use free tier services; that signals that if you want to get my money, you have to do lots more than simply have a mouth to run. Some of those services have managed to prove their worth to my satisfaction, and deserved my payment, such as SDF which is where I have an account on, but even then I avoid subs and prefer one-time payments instead. But they are a minority (trust is not to be handed over freely) and Proton just squandered any chance of ever making the list.
How do you think a company should pay for your free tear service? If you give your marginal market signal that you are not available to pay for services, companies will use business models that don't rely on that.
Also it's self-absolution to say that even companies you pay snoop on you. There are many serious companies that offer great services for a price and respect your privacy, because it's their interest to do so. Proton, kagi but even Garmin for example.
I understand, but this simply doesn't make sense for services that have running costs forever. A pay-as-you-go model or subscription makes more sense here.
In general
It doesn't. It only signals you are not available to pay their current price for that service. For most companies the only option is to get the money from someone else, for example selling your data.
As a user who cares about privacy, we should incentivise healthy business models that allow us to pay with out money and not with our data. Stopping to do this in principle ("I avoid paying for a service if I can") because the CEO expresses an opinion you disagree with seems just fishing for a justification. Of course your money are yours and you do what you want, but don't be surprised when there are no good privacy respecting services to choose from.