WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

Does anybody have stats on how many people are O.K. paying for their core services, i.e. how many people pay for paid personal e-mail services?

I just don't want to believe that our services have to be paid for through proxy by giving huge cut to 3rd parties. The quality goes down both as UX and as core content, our attention span is destroyed, our privacy is violated and our political power is being stolen as content gets curated by those who extract money by giving us the "free" services.

It's simply very inefficient. IMHO we should go back to pay for what you use, this can't go on forever. There must be way to turn everything into a paid service where you get what you paid for and have your lives enhanced instead of monetized by proxy.

I have a pet theory that the world would be slightly better place if the United States Postal Service had launched a convenient and free (taxpayer-funded) email service before Google:

1. I think folks would be naturally more skeptical of the government than they are of big tech, ideally leading to E2EE for email that's usable by the masses.

2. Phishing and scams could have a dedicated law enforcement arm (Postal Inspectors).

3. We'd reduce the amount of email-based personal data being mined and turned into entirely unregulated ad-tech nightmares.

> 1. I think folks would be naturally more skeptical of the government than they are of big tech, ideally leading to E2EE for email that's usable by the masses.

That is so weird to me. "Institutions that exist for the sole purpose of serving the people might end up having some power, so let's instead give it all to the literal oligarchs."

Depends on where you are. In some countries people don't trust institutions unfortunately.