by Imustaskforhelp | 2026-01-17 02:01:58+00:00
I think I was writing something about "gmail" to something and my train of thought just went on going until I hit a jackpoint (I think) and I'd like to share that, It took me an hour of just talking to myself

I tried to evaluate Gmail alternatives (Mxroute, Cranemail) and some VPS costs and just about something that most people might use for their use cases and actually "own" it (in sort of sometimes as much autonomy as Google might because I am sure that Google sometimes partners up with datacenters as well, technically being similar to colocation) but usually they are autonomous and give you far far more freedom than the arbitrary terms and conditions set by say google for gmail

If we do some cost analysis, I feel like these are gonna be cheap (for a frugal person like me who will try to cut extreme corners while still evaluating everything) or to a much more average person who might join a particular forum during black friday and just know one of the best ones or running deals everyday to even using one provider itself. The costs on average I feel like shouldn't exist 25/30$ per month for mail,domain & vps to host open source in, so in essense this is the cost of their privacy

For countries with a strong currency, this is such a great deal and they benefit greatly from something like this and they spend much more on far fewer impactful things than say one's privacy.

The problem isn't the pricing model, contary to that, the problem feels to me something deeper.

It feels something psychological. I observed that people buy twitter blue stars and discord nitros etc. (which can probably cost the same as if not more expensive than running one owns matrix/xmpp servers & mastodon which could provide unlimited freedom of modification instead)

The problem to me feels like people pay in this context, not because of the real value but of the apparent value instead.

For them the value of buying a checkmark and getting part of say 1 million or 100_000 members out of 100_000_000 (think twitter) would feel better than say being 1 out of 25_000/50_000 (mastodon running)

Why is that the case? Because I think what they are feeling is that they aren't thinking in percentages but they are thinking in numbers, they "beat" 90_000_000 people than being one out of a unique but small community (once again mastodon example where one would feel less satisfied if they recognize that they are 100 out of 50_000 or similar), Not unless the goal of privacy is something that they assign more value than the apparent other psychological value.

So coming back to the twitter example, People would be likely and willing to pay more money not owning anything on a platform where the deal should suck in real value and just about everything combined but just because of numbers/psychology effect, the deal can make sense. (Of course, there is also the fact of influence which is once again introduced by the fact that these websites create an artificial scarcity (of something unlimited) & fulfill it and the people who get that feel more rare and they get more influence, that's how people feel in discord, for the very least part)

Another issue with this system is that since it relies on having massive amounts of people & people wanting to pay in a weird deal after masses, they have to offset costs till then and mostly the scope of influence of these companies grow and this attracts the type of people notorious in the VC industry and thus this is linked to VC industry which I feel like causes it to focus on growth and then maximally renting out profit almost being a landlord something which I feel like even Adam Smith wouldn't really appreciate but that's another point for another day.

My point is, that evil becomes an emergent property out of such system even if better opinions arise because better opinions still require some friction in start but they are predictable and the definition of "evil" has in this case the definition of starting out smooth and ending roughly (Take Google company as an example, reddit), this is "enshittenification"

So people are more likely to support evil if other people support evil as well and the definition of evil is somehow based on common morals and our morals have simply not catched up to these technological advancements in the sense that most people also aren't aware of the extent of damage/privacy breaches and since these companies now gain influence/power, lobbying efforts and lack of information regarding it themselves feels easier because they themselves are becoming the landlords of information.

So Is this path Inevitable, No, not really. Previously I mentioned the 30$ but what if I tell you that companies like proton can have deals where you still get privacy without the tech know-how so it kmight be good for the average person and people are backlashing but only because if they know all things I said prior (in their own way) and the value of privacy starts to rise

I definitely feel like there is some psychological effect to this following the mass and I am sure that these companies deploy other psychologists as well and in a way, our brains still run on primordial hardware thinking we are in jungles hunting today or we might die tomorrow if we don't get food but now we have to think for 10-20 years ahead.

So I feel like as much as we Hackernews might like to admit we are smart. I feel like admitting that the amount of psychological research I feel like put into algorithms is also precisely the reason why even we of all people might use gmail.

I don't believe the answer is because its a superior product but rather the psychological and all the other reasons I mentioned and this is also precisely why the small computing movement or indie computing movement (where Individuals like you and me create computing businesses/services where once again you and me can play a part of) as ompared to the large tech behemoths

Honestly thinking about it, like we say to combat fire with fire, should we need to combat psychology with psychology. Effectively creating a movement which can be "viral" using these social media as their hosts to spread a positive idea instead of a negative one which could effectively limit the influence of algorithm itself.

In fact the anger against such system is so much that even just a well intentioned idea like just "clippy" became a movement which amassed atleast millions in a similar fashion.

So I guess we need more Clippy like movements and we need psychologists to help us develop it so that we can move our collective energy into it instead of diversifying it and going nowhere.

Pardon me if this might feel a little off topic since I haven't re-read the post and I have just went with the flow of just writing whatever came in my head after talking to myself once about it in my head as well as the idea of an indie tech movment is something that I deeply think about from time to time.