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Also, do people not pay for it because there are still so many free competing services?

If everything goes the way of ads and (for lack of a better term) enshittification, could consumer attitudes change?



There is a market for paid software services with a promise of not enshittifying. Kagi and Fastmail are two examples.

Now, this market probably isn’t going to put you in the Fortune 500, but is enough to run a profitable business.


The problem is that there is also tons of services that promised not to enshittify but then changed their minds when they thought that fucking over their users would be more profitable. That includes even Google, look up their early views on ads. Because of this those promises are often (IMO rightfully) ignored as hot air. The only way to ensure that your software doesn't get enshittified is to legally guarantee that you are not dependent on a single vendor for future development - the most effective way to do that is insist on open source software.


Yeah I love open source. Daily Linux desktop user and open source code contributor here.

Open source doesn’t solve the problem “I need to be able to search the entire internet for a document.” Even “I want to safely receive email” is a challenge to do with open source software. At some point I need to use software as a service, and at that point I’d prefer to give money to the service directly than having the service target advertising at me.


That's not the only way. Wikipedia has avoided it through a non-profit, donation and volunteer based structure.




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