[romeotango]

Sadly, I think you are correct. The Internet of the last decade has ushered in the freemium model and people now expect it. I often tell people that if you are not a paying customer, you are the product. As you so bluntly stated, most people don't care. Sad, but true. All services that I value, I pay for, as none of them are freemium. I enjoy being a customer, not the product. Ads suck, anyway, and they are now the number one vector for malware. No thank you.

[vdaniuk]

>I often tell people that if you are not a paying customer, you are the product.

You should stop doing that because it is a harmful oversimplifation. A thought terminating truism.

Is Wikipedia user a product? Is Creative Commons user a product? Is non-paying Github user a product? Is PBS website user a product? Is rubygems, npm or crate user a product?

Is user paying for Google Drive not a product? Is user paying App Store not a product? Is user paying for her ads FB not a product?

This "you are the product" is a bad model to describe power dynamics for multi-sided market platforms.

> I enjoy being a customer, not the product

Do you not understand that here, on HN, by your definition, you are the product enabling activities to push YC and YC funded startups?

>Ads suck, anyway, and they are now the number one vector for malware.

Citation please.

[dragonwriter]

> I often tell people that if you are not a paying customer, you are the product.

And I often tell people that this popular line is poppycock. Usually, if you aren't the paying customer, your the person supplying a product in exchange for something of value, i.e., a supplier.

There are exceptions (e.g., the slave trade), but they are edge cases.

[api]

Most people just don't care about privacy or security at all. They'll say they do and get all angry when stuff like this comes up, but they don't alter their buying habits therefore they don't care.

[teaneedz]

0r ethics ;) and you are quite correct - look at the SnapChat users.