If You Think The Reason Internet Companies Snarf Up Your Data Is Because Their Services Are Free, Allow Me To Introduce You To The Telcos

It’s been a few years since this kind of argument has come up, but it’s one that we’ve had to swat down a few times in the past: it’s the argument that somehow if a company offers a service for free, it means that they’ll absolutely snarf up all your data, and that requiring services be paid for directly by users somehow would fix that.

Of course, it seems rather easy to point out why that’s wrong with two examples. First we pay for other services such as our broadband and mobile data providers and they are so much worse on the privacy front, it’s not even remotely comparable. It’s not as if magically paying for the service has stopped AT&T or Verizon from being horrific on the privacy front. The snarfing up of data doesn’t go away if you pay for services.

Second, there are businesses that have been built on giving away free tools without having to snarf up your data. Indeed, that’s actually how Google succeeded for much of its early history. It didn’t need to know everything about you. It just needed to know what you were searching for. And that was massively successful. It’s true that, over time, Google has moved away from that, but others (like DuckDuckGo) have stepped into that space as well.