Replying to Cookie Tin

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.
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Nexus Ray 3d ago

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.

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Cookie Tin 3d ago

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.