Someone needs to pay for cloud stuff. Free software works locally, but the moment servers get involved beyond a basic homepage, there’s a monthly bill to be paid for every user on the platform.

For local software, you paid for your computer, maybe for your software, and the costs for running stuff on your computer are all on you; you can use that stuff as much as you’re able to afford. For cloud software, the costs aren’t that different, but as a free user, you’re no longer paying the power and bandwidth fees that these services generate.

If you can’t or don’t want to pay, you subject yourself to the terms that come with the free versions of these services. Most of them provide incredible value for free, but free stuff will get terrible the moment investor funds run out. Every service people expect for free is either maintained by paying customers or is trying to undercut the market and destroy any chance of competition through investor funding. The latter is great for free users for the first part of it, but no company will use its monopoly just to benefit free users.

YouTube crushed the competition and only with investor money has TikTok managed to become relevant. Twitch is a loss leader in several countries because Bezos can afford it. Spotify could only be stopped by Apple’s even shadier business tactics.

Free stuff works when it’s run by a bunch of volunteers for a small group of people (small enough so server costs can be paid by donations or out of the admins’ pockets) but the moment something becomes popular, the service will either require a lot of extra money or it’ll fall over. If all of Reddit’s free users went over to Lemmy, Lemmy servers would collapse left, right, and center.

The internet got where it is because investor money has had companies give away expensive services for free for years, decades even. That’s not a sustainable model for obvious reasons, but if we don’t get rid of the “everything should be free without ads” attitude, we’ll only be helping investors and investor backed companies gain more market dominance.

Alternatively, use (and buy) local software. There’s no reason for everything to be done through a web browser or cloud connected app. You’ll lose the fancy new features for free, but if your software works for you, it’ll work for you for years to come. No enshittification possible!