Comment by 15457345234
9 months ago
> But in terms of being free, no, free doesn’t work.
Free worked for much longer than it didn't work, and it will work again. There just needs to be a drastic adjustment in the amount of greed considered socially acceptable, and I can already see that pendulum swinging back.
It didn't work because it was free, it worked because you had to pay something more like dollars per page you published to host content than like pennies per thousands of pages.
For quite a long time, other than exceptions like geocities, you had to pay to publish your own content.
People who had an axe to grind or a hobby to share were "pamphleteering" and it was great.
"Free" only worked when there was little to no economic interest in the web.
So all we need to do is change our economic model, social norms, and human nature.
Easy peasy.
Those damned greedy servers needing electricity to run.