Dear Twitter, YouTube & Facebook — can’t I just pay to be on you? Because I would…
A couple of years ago I used the picture above in a LinkedIn Pulse post. In it I said ‘get over yourself and pay for something’. I was talking mostly about information.
The argument was partly moral (if a thing is consistently useful, supporting its creators is a good thing to do) and partly about mental health (stop feeling overwhelmed by exponentially expanding choices. If you invest in something, you’ll be more likely to use it instead of relentlessly seeking more).
I’ve chopped and changed what I pay for on-line since then, as needs and priorities shift, but I stuck to the principle. These days I balk at using a ‘free’ thing without paying, just because I don’t have to pay for it. So I pay to support certain unmissable podcasts. I donated to the ‘free’ Audacity program I use to edit my own podcast. I often buy the proverbial ‘cup of coffee’ for developers of various handy on-line tools — or (imagine it!) take up a paid plan.
Virtue signaling? Maybe, a bit. But the more important point is that I’m increasingly convinced that free has come to mean toxic. And here’s why.
You know the building adage — you can only have it two out of three ways?
Good and cheap, but not quick.
Quick and good, but not cheap.
Cheap and quick, but not good.
In the information world you can have it these ways.
- Free and crap — and also exploitative of you.
- Free and good, but exploitative of either the creator or you (with notable not-for-profit exceptions — like Wikimedia).
- Good and paid for.
- There is no 4.
We’ve known for years that we become the product when a product is offered in return for no money. We know that the personal data we give away on-line has been used to effect political change we might not be happy with. We know that adtech is the economic engine of the propaganda ecosystem unraveling liberal democracies while degrading the news business toward noise production rather than essential information. We know all this, but we just carry on ignoring it.
But I read something today by James Bridle on here that nudged me further toward a thought I’ve been pondering for a while, in response to all the shit I’m exposed to on-line. It’s this story, about automated content served on YouTube for kids. Stop reading this now and read that, before continuing.
That picture up there is YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and all the other places we inhabit on-line ‘free of charge’. It’s full of shit. The reason it’s free of charge is inseparable from the reason it’s full of shit. And it’s filling up with more shit every time you go there… because you are going there.
If you’re bothering to read this you’ll already know Twitter is full of bots and sock puppets. And — laughably — Facebook claims to be able to reach more people than exist, in various parts of the world. Doubtless at least in part because fake accounts warp their idea of who is really out there. Here’s a bunch of them that took about five seconds to find, when I was investigating a different story.
So here’s a thought. It won’t be popular. The ‘open web’ community will hate it. And Socialists will hate it. Internet Utopians and admirers of the old cypherpunk movement will sneer at it. ‘Free speech’ obsessives will whine about who gets to decide what is said or not said and by whom. The pedantic court of public opinion will find infinite opportunities for wotaboutery in response. And I don’t care. It’s not an argument for anyone else to do anything. It’s just a thought about where I’m at.
I’d pay to be free of political bots and sock puppets on Twitter. It’s worth money to me, not to have fake people around. I don’t have to tolerate fake people anywhere else in my life, so I don’t want them there either. And I’d pay for that luxury. Give me a version of Twitter where I don’t have to puzzle over whether the people atting me from behind a pet dog avatar are real or not. I’ll pay to be on it. You can all stay on the free version if you want. I’m not telling you what you should do.
Give me an option on YouTube to exclude automated content, narrated by Google Translate, when I’m looking for a tutorial on something. I’ll pay for that too. Oh, and I’m happy to pay to prevent WEIRD SHIT BEING SERVED TO CHILDREN if you can’t do without the ad revenues that type of shit generates. Deal?
Offer me the chance to pay for Facebook in return for not harvesting my data and selling it to people I wouldn’t piss on if they were on fire. And show me content you’ve bothered to establish is not, say, promoted by a foreign state while pretending to be a domestic actor. You can do it. And I’ll pay you for the privilege.
Yes, I know this is all about the privilege of affordability. But if we’re to halt the moronification of the internet, we’d best start paying for more stuff soon.
