this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026
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Probably gonna get hate for this but like... Yeah if I had the option to pay for more things and not be tracked and dataharvested, I would. The infrastructure and support isn't free. What's really shit is when they do both... The prices should be lower, like way way way lower, but middlemen all want their cuts for transactions so you'll almost never see subs for under a dollar.
Just because you pay a subscription to avoid ads does not mean your data is not still being harvested and sold. The big exception is now they have a payment method tied to a specific person not just an ad profile.
That has more to do with what apps you chose to use and give them your data.
But people still don't get the basic principle "if you don't pay, you are not the customer, your are the merchandise being sold".
You are right but just as the original commenter said, even if you pay there is no way to be sure the app you just paid for isn't harvesting and selling your sweet sweet usage data. Like Tiktok I'd imagine would 100% do.
I am at a point where I'd really like to support and pay for apps, even closed source ones, just so they don't show me ads or harvest my data. Open source is much better at that, of course.
No way to be sure? It is absolutely sure that they are harvesting every bit of data they can from you.
My wife was shocked when she googled herself and found information that could only have been obtained by reading all of her emails. I explained that Gmail and other mail services are not charities, and if you're not paying for them with money, you are paying with something else.
Yep. Like proton started out immediately as a secure alternative. I'd trust them. I imagine tuta and others as well.
As for the rest (Google, meta, tiktok) I'd say there is zero chance your data would ever hope to never be harvested.
I mean I get where you're coming from, but imo we shouldn't have to pay to not be tracked and data harvested. You can run ads and have them not be creepy stalky, it's only greed to maxmize profits that pushes companies to go for the stalker option.
I know this is in the UK, but on this topic, in the EU, is it even legal to require to pay to avoid tracking? Tracking should require consent, but it should be non-forced, meaning, connecting the consent to some other condition, like paying, is likely not legal.
I have YouTube premium but (besides now) I'm borderline afraid to reveal this to anyone online due to crowd mentality being fully against paying for YouTube. It's around 3.5€ per month for me as part of family plan me and bunch of friends created. Supposedly creators earn far more from premium watches than people watching ads, so that's nice to know.
I like(d) YouTube premium. It pays significantly more to creators while removing ads and adds other paywalled features like music.
But I stopped mine because I became more budget conscious, and because I basically stopped using the site entirely because the UX is so bad! I primarily use freetube desktop and pipepipe android, so creators weren't going to get paid for my views anyways, so I just cancelled... But ideally, if the site UX wasn't terrible and I used it as intended, I'd happily sub.
And if you really trust a company that much then you deserve to lose your money AND data...
Ah yes, blame the victims instead of the perpetrators.
Never said I trusted the company, just that it would be preferred if that were the case. At least with paying customers there's an incentive to be pro-consumer. If Proton was snooping on all your shit I think they'd have fewer customers. Likewise I pay for Kagi, primarily for the features and services they offer, but improved privacy is part of the sales proposition; yes they could make more profit selling customer data but that would be a pretty big reputation hit.
Do I trust them not to? No, but "maybe they won't " is better than "they absolutely must"