If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you are the product being sold. http://bit.ly/cwgr4x
This is (yet another) reason why I don’t like advertising. Effectively whoever makes the program (website, etc) is not interested in me, only that they can sell me out to advertisers who’s content I do not want to see (99% of the time).
I am not a product to be sold.
2 replies on “If you’re not paying for it,…”
AS the Firesign Theater once said “Eat or be Eaten.” As Robert Heinlein said “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”
No one creates content for free, at least not for long. They have to get paid somehow — either in ego points, or in money. It doesn’t get much clearer than that, unless you’re Mother Theresa (and I’m not 100% sure about that either).
And, sorry Philip, but if you’ve done so much as sign up for a newsletter or given anyone some of your information EVER — then you are being sold. This is a parallel discussion to the issue of privacy.
If you’re not paying for it directly then you’re being sold – your attention is being sold mostly, as you say.