This is what is absolutely crazy about the modern internet. We pay for data – and because net neutrality is dead, we pay more if we go over a cap. And yet, we do not have direct control over what corporations choose to force feed us through that data.*
Consider the analogy of terrestrial TV (not a perfect one, but good enough for this). Back in the day, you put up an antenna, and you received programming. There was no data limit, because it’s just airwaves. Watch as much as you want. But one downside: advertising, except the case was easily made that it pays for the programming, the broadcasting, etc, so it was somewhat of a different beast. That cost was not passed to you. You “paid” for it by accepting the injection of ads into the programming.
Fast forward to today. Let’s say you want to stream a show that you would have gotten on terrestrial TV back in the day. Now, you pay to access that content (not going into the deeper issue of lack of ownership here), but you also effectively pay for the broadcasting, in the old sense of the word. While it is true that companies incur costs to run their servers and dish out the data, you, the consumer, must pay to access the network it uses. And again, because neutrality is gone, you pay more if you go over your cap – for the content that you pay to access anyway.
It starts to look shockingly like a double dip. Consider what you’re doing when on a corporate website: you pay for the hardware. You pay for the data. You (often) pay for the content that uses the data. And yet, these corporations still gave the gall to inject advertising into your data stream.
It gets crazier the more you think about it.
*ad blockers and sponsorblock give you some control, but ultimately they are reactive Band-Aids on the modern system
This is what is absolutely crazy about the modern internet. We pay for data – and because net neutrality is dead, we pay more if we go over a cap. And yet, we do not have direct control over what corporations choose to force feed us through that data.*
Consider the analogy of terrestrial TV (not a perfect one, but good enough for this). Back in the day, you put up an antenna, and you received programming. There was no data limit, because it’s just airwaves. Watch as much as you want. But one downside: advertising, except the case was easily made that it pays for the programming, the broadcasting, etc, so it was somewhat of a different beast. That cost was not passed to you. You “paid” for it by accepting the injection of ads into the programming.
Fast forward to today. Let’s say you want to stream a show that you would have gotten on terrestrial TV back in the day. Now, you pay to access that content (not going into the deeper issue of lack of ownership here), but you also effectively pay for the broadcasting, in the old sense of the word. While it is true that companies incur costs to run their servers and dish out the data, you, the consumer, must pay to access the network it uses. And again, because neutrality is gone, you pay more if you go over your cap – for the content that you pay to access anyway.
It starts to look shockingly like a double dip. Consider what you’re doing when on a corporate website: you pay for the hardware. You pay for the data. You (often) pay for the content that uses the data. And yet, these corporations still gave the gall to inject advertising into your data stream.
It gets crazier the more you think about it.
*ad blockers and sponsorblock give you some control, but ultimately they are reactive Band-Aids on the modern system