Comment by imiric

It's not my place, nor am I smart enough to propose a solution. But if you ask me, I would start with much stricter regulations regarding company transparency, data collection, and data privacy. There are two things making this very unlikely, though:

- Governments and companies are in symbiosis. Companies can influence which laws are passed and how they apply to them, and governments depend on these companies both financially, and practically for their services. Nowhere is this clearer than in the US, where actual CEOs are now running the country.

- The general public doesn't really care about these issues. For most people their data and privacy isn't a concern, and even when it is, it's not a large enough of a concern that they would be willing to stop using these services, or use alternatives. Since advertising/propaganda works on a subconscious level, they're literally brainwashed to not see a problem at all.

So I realistically don't see a way out of this. It would require changes in deeply rooted sociopolitical systems just to get on the right path, and then years of effort to keep us there. And without unanimous public support for all of this, it will never come to pass.

As for alternative business models, that's the least of our problems. Technical solutions for this exist today, and wouldn't be difficult to expand and build upon, but the actual challenge is changing the public perception of what "free" means. The solution likely wouldn't be as profitable for companies as advertising currently is, which is why we would need regulations to force it. When weighing the success of another billion-dollar corporation against our society's mental health and stability, the choice is obvious to me.