This article is drivel.

>how many of you pay at least 500rs/month for services that give you privacy

It's my understanding that's between $7.00 and $8.00; I pay less than half of that to have an entire server I use for things such as hosting my own email server for my personal use.

>Instead of paying for it, many of the people at the panel wanted the government to mandate it. Moreover, many people seemed to think it would somehow be free to provide.

I can understand why this would be looked down upon, but isn't this the manner of thing a government is intended to do? If we're going to pretend democracy is so great, then people wanting the government to outlaw certain business models is perfectly reasonable.

>Will you pay $20-50 a month to replace your free online services with privacy preserving ones?

I'll pay for a server and that's all. If I can no longer read some articles online because of a pay wall, then I won't, but I may if it's otherwise available to me gratis, but I still won't allow any JavaScript to run and so won't see any advertisements. If they dislike people not viewing advertisements, they should have a pay wall, but many of these organizations are aware people won't pay for what they offer.

>User tracking enables product managers/UI designers to figure out exactly what customers want, and give it to them.

They can go to Hell.

>A special case of fraud which also relates to the problem of paying for services with advertising is display network fraud. Here's how it works. I run "My Cool Awesome Website About Celebrities", and engage in all the trappings of a legitimate website - creating content, hiring editors, etc. Then I pay some kids in Ukraine to build bots that browse the site and click the ads. Instant money, at the expense of the advertisers.

This never ceases to amuse me, so far.

>To prevent this, the ad network demands the ability to spy on users in order to distinguish between bots and humans.

They can also go to Hell.

>Question: What does the government call a payment platform that provides privacy to it's users?
>Answer: Money laundering.

Money laundering is a made-up crime, just as with jaywalking and copyright infringement.

>In many cases, censorship authorities require social networks and others to track and notify them about people posting illegal content (Nazi imagery, child pornography, Savita Bhabhi, anti-Islamic content).

Oh, so the government makes rules that make something illegal, so the illegal thing is bad. Yes, I can't run a service that transfers money and is unmoderated, because it's illegal. I'm American and I'm well aware this ''freedom'' I enjoy is a lie.

>This is a fundamental collective action problem, and no player in the game seems to have the ability change things.

Right, governments conspire against their citizens, but this is an intractable problem.

>There are bad actors out there - fraudsters/scammers, terrorists laundering money, legal gun manufacturers moving money around, child pornographers, people who believe in evolution (even among humans), people advocating abandoning Islam, Russians posting Pepe memes, and journalists/revenge pornographers revealing truthful information that people want kept hidden. Any privacy preserving network, at it's core, allows these people to engage in these actions without interference.

Many of these things aren't like the others.

What utter foolishness.