> And whenever any of these groups come up with a project they want to do, they won't have to ramp it up to billion dollar scale in order not to be drowned out by a terrible and loud commercial product. There will be plenty of broke users looking for alternatives.
They absolutely will have to since they won't have the means to serve the content to the community otherwise.
Niche websites won't stay niche for very long if they are the only free option.
> I think the only risk of this happening is if free alternatives get so generous and useful that the commercial internet tries to raise the price of bandwidth somehow, or of running a server in general, or alternatively by lobbying for expensive regulatory stuff to get governments to do their dirty work for them.
I don't see most of these free alternatives even existing in the first place.
For example: free news reporting (not even talking about foreign correspondents & co).
They absolutely will have to since they won't have the means to serve the content to the community otherwise.
Niche websites won't stay niche for very long if they are the only free option.
> I think the only risk of this happening is if free alternatives get so generous and useful that the commercial internet tries to raise the price of bandwidth somehow, or of running a server in general, or alternatively by lobbying for expensive regulatory stuff to get governments to do their dirty work for them.
I don't see most of these free alternatives even existing in the first place. For example: free news reporting (not even talking about foreign correspondents & co).