I don't like how he assumes that a free internet must be ad-supported. The ad-supported web is hideous, even with their ads removed. A long, convoluted, inane mess of content.
On the other hand, the clean web feels more direct, to the point, and passionate. I prefer to read content written by passion, not by money seeking purposes.
That's not correct. Linux is free, almost all open source is, many projects, websites are done out of passion.
I contribute to open source projects and nobody "gave me something", as I did it because I wanted to make it better. Like me, there are many others. Nobody is "the product" there.
What the saying you are misrepresenting means is "carefully check free things as you may be the product". Not "free things cannot exist, you either are the product or you pay".
Linux development is paid for either directly or in-kind by companies including Red Hat, IBM, Canonical, Oracle, and others. It's free to use and mostly open source but if it existed only on passion it would be something far less than it actually is.
People need to eat and have a roof over their heads.
Those companies pay the improvements they want for their usage case, which is usually far removed from what normal users want. I don't really need support for thousands of CPUs and terabytes of RAM.
Do you remember what Linux was like before the big corporations started contributing/supporting it? Just getting X11 working with your video card and monitor could take hours or days. Setting up a single server could easily be a "project" taking weeks. And god forbid you ever had to update it.
That in particular was thanks to the X.Org foundation. And while it made things easier, it didn't take "days" setting up a graphics, it took hours at most. And setting up a server didn't take weeks, it was an 1-2 day task at worst.
> If something is free (en masse), you are probably a product.
If something being free ever mattered to your privacy, it hasn't for a long time. Today no matter how expensive something is you are probably a product anyway. Unethical and greedy companies don't care how much money you paid them, they'll want the additional cash they'll get from selling you out at every opportunity. Much of my favorite software is free and doesn't compromise my privacy.
Fine, but don't make my machine do work as part of the agreement between host and advertiser (the only reason I can utilize an ad blocker in the first place). And definitely don't try to make it so my machine can't object to you trying. On top of all that, most places want to take my money, AND force ads, AND make my machine part of the process.
On the other hand, the clean web feels more direct, to the point, and passionate. I prefer to read content written by passion, not by money seeking purposes.