What if internet access was just free? What would that world be like? What would an entity like Facebook do to try to win people over that isn’t “it’s easier to access our service than anybody else’s?” Actually, how is that different from any other corporation? I think the reason that I use any of the things that I use is that it makes something easier, or it’s easier to use it than to do something else. Wait, that’s an oversimplification. I eat for reasons other than it’s easier than doing other things. I suppose what I eat falls in this category of “sometimes I choose to eat something easier than something else,” but other times, I choose to eat something requiring way more effort than something else.
I just realized that we have an example already: mass media in the form of radio and TV. Broadcasting! Well… I guess electricity and the upfront cost of a receiver. Unless you were in 1982 or that one episode of black mirror and couldn’t choose whether or not you listened to something.
So: ads. “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads” and so on. http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/magazine/content/11_17/b4225060960537.htm
Is this it, then? Is the whole point of all technology and connectedness a race by those with resources to control access to knowledge? Was this obvious to everybody else already?