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  • Free Is Bad

  • How the Free Web Hurt Privacy, Truth and Democracy….And What You Can Do About It
  • Written by: John Marshall
  • Narrated by: John Marshall
  • Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
  • 5.0 out of 5 stars (1 rating)

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Free Is Bad

Written by: John Marshall
Narrated by: John Marshall
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Publisher's Summary

Almost everything we consume online is free. Email, search, news, entertainment. But those apps on our phones aren't really free - so if we're not paying, who is? The surveillance marketing industry. It doesn't have to be this way.

  • Web pioneers tried to invent new payment methods.
  • Google's founders were dead set against advertising.
  • Email wasn't always open to data mining.

Yet here we are. Why?

Because business can exploit our desire that "Information wants to be free", and yet someone needs to pay. It started way back in the early days of the republic, evolved with newspapers, radio and broadcast TV, and persists today online.

Be the customer, not the product.

In Free Is Bad, digital marketing entrepreneur John Marshall explores the web industry's early history and its search for viable business models. It's an investigation of how an evolutionary accident in the design of the web resulted in the ad-tech industry, enabling "free" as the default model for technology products like search and email, and for media products like news and entertainment.

  • How did we become the product?
  • Why that has led to the fracturing of society
  • How new, people-first businesses are improving matters

Free Is Bad offers not just a critique but optimism for a future where we control our online destiny. It also provides practical steps that will immediately improve your privacy and quality of information.

Ultimately, we're better off being the customer and not the product, because Free Is Bad. This book explains why that is, and what you can do about it.

©2020 John Marshall (P)2020 John Marshall

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There is a lot going on here!

Wow!

This was a great revelation on how I am the product. How I am getting compromised and definitely not compensated. The big tech companies make a lot of money off my data. Which I gave away.

There are people born today that have their whole lives exposed to the big tech and ad companies. Even if I am not active on social media, my friends can give up my data. Can I ever get my data back?

What is stopping a vendor fro gleaning my income and making decisions based on it? Raising the prices when they think they can get away with it. Filtering my news to see their view. Basically taking my identity and adjust it to what 'they' want. Or selling info for something criminal?

All because I let them. Free in price is not the same as having liberty.
Altruism and capitalism do not co exist.

While I can see some value in personalizing info, there is nothing personal when done by a algorithms.

Maybe some company will see this data to help the individual first, then derive their benefit.
The example of Apple for instance, building their brand on privacy. (I am not saying Apple is good, just less evil)

Really worth a listen with concrete steps on how to change.

Or, if enough people insist to their politicians, it could changed to something better.



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