You might not be the "product" on nostr things, but you are definitely the janitor—you are responsible for your own data and security.
Discussion
I've been kicking the tires here for some weeks and my conclusion is that all of us free users are the product, or will be, somehow.
Unless it's a passionate dev surviving on donations and coffee, I always have my guard up when using costly (or at least costly enough) online infrastructure for free, as I'm doing now.
Why am I getting this all for free? Why am I not being forced to pay?
It's frustrating, because if all clients or relays (or both) force-charged everyone just a little bit to take part it'd be a very compelling network.
Here's a 4k video of a waterfall which is not going to be cheap wherever it goes. I should not be able to just show up and post that.
https://blossom.primal.net/2c0759240fefe3723885573ad72f34befe8bb9ea4c10d3e737e0ff30f3b87c64.mp4
That is where we need a bit a mind shift. Somehow people believe that whatever you use you somehow need to pay for it directly… but firstly there are some basic stuff that you need to should have for free and in a way you do… linux is for free, myriads of resources to build internet are free of charge and when you chat with someone using say Signal all you pay is Internet access fee (and not for every router hop that was used during your conversation) - so that is also in a way free. Since nowadays people use social media to hang out, talk to others then that should also be free, provided to you like a street or park bench in your city where you should be allowed to sit, talk to others, read a book without being surveilled at all times and some kind of algorithm should not be telling you what you should see. Democratizing/opening algorithms is a way forward and your country/taxes should pay for infrastructure.
I don't agree, I think people have been conditioned to think stuff is free when it isn't in practical reality.
Linux is free, but VMs running Linux are not free. (What's linux without a machine to run it on?)
Internet resources are free in a sense, but the sites that host and propagate them, like say Github, have many bills to pay.
When you chat with someone using Signal you're using an app that runs up an AWS bill of millions of dollars each month. And those routers your message hopped across, someone manufactured and sold them (probably Cisco), and someone pays the electricity bill for them.
When something has a cost someone is paying for it. For Nostr, there is a collective "nostr bill" to pay each month, including developer reimbursement, and the donations and subscriptions can't come anywhere close to covering that bill. So something is wrong here. We're getting all this expert time for free, all this expensive infra for free. That is never healthy imo.
Some things that really are free are sunshine and rain. And hugs if you're lucky.
Roads, parks, and the entire infrastructure in your hometown, neighboring cities, or even your vacation destinations aren't free either - someone cleans them, someone fixes the potholes. Yet whenever you drive to another country or enter a park, nobody stands there forcing you to watch ads or trying to mess with your brain. So how does this get paid for if it not you that is paying directly? i am not asking for fancy motorways for free or for free stuff in shops but I want a place where I can meet others, share my opinions, and talk without being surveilled or manipulated. This should be funded just like our local roads - take some of my taxes and pay for it. Freedom of speech and our relationships should not be monetized the way they are right now. It is setting us apart and not building trust.
That all gets paid for with taxes, as you mention. You pay taxes for your parks, and if you travel to another country it's quid pro quo, each side pays for their own, each side visits (hence how tourist visa systems generally work), and of course VAT is paid wherever.
Point is, there is no national social media tax collector. There is no government funding nostr, no city council funding nostr clients based in their city.
So the costs have to come from our pockets, the users! Right now all this money is coming from somewhere not the users, and not an entity that has collected some form of tax from the users to disburse it around.
So that's not right. It's never right. This is a lesson the internet keeps learning over and over. Let's make it free to start. Oops that was a bad idea. Let's make it free to start. Oops that was a bad idea. ... One day we have to break the cycle.