I first ran across this concept (TANSTAAFL) in the original Adventure computer game (also sometimes called Colossal Cave). It’s a principle that needs to be revisited in light of several recent developments.

Very often, “free” things are actually sponsored. Wikipedia defines sponsorship, in part, as: a cash and/or in-kind fee paid to a property in return for access to the exploitable commercial potential associated with that property.
So for sponsored things, you are not the customer. You may consider yourself the consumer, but  you’re not. You are exploitable commercial potential (I’m going to call this ECP for the rest of the article). Have you been exploited yet today? I bet you have!

If you watched television today, you’ve been handed over to the advertisers as ECP. If you listened to the radio, visited a web site that uses google adsense, used Facebook, you were ECP.

OK, big deal. We all know that. We grew up with it. Well, yes and no. It’s been there for a while, but the boundaries are shifting, and not in a nice way. The implications are fierce and getting worse.

Not just television in general, but television news in particular is a separately funded entity. Now we don’t merely get the news. We get the news that sells advertising. We get more bad news than good news, because bad news sells, and good news doesn’t. It wasn’t always this way. I love this quote (from Lewis Lapham, quoted here):

As recently as 1960, there was something called the press, there was something called literature, there was something called drama, and there was something called the movies; and they were all different.

And now they’ve blended together. Consider “reality television”. Now there’s an oxymoron. Staged and scripted reality.

You go to watch the news. In the end, you feel like the news is being manipulated. Because it is. It’s being packaged to fit. Fit in around the ads, fit into the 10 minutes allotted, fit not your needs as the watcher, but the needs of the advertiser.

Ever watched television news on a slow news day? Don’t you just wish they’d get it over with early, because the rubbish they’re talking about is below consideration? On other days, they gloss over important issues, because there’s too much news? That’s packaging.

So instead you go to the internet to get your news. News that interests you. Do you get it? No.

You get popups that won’t go away, cars that drive over the article you’re trying to read, loud sounds that wake up the partner sleeping beside you in bed. These things all interfere with your getting the news. Why?

Because you didn’t pay for the news. Someone else paid for the news web site, and it’s their agenda that’s being met, not yours.

So you go to Facebook to check up on your friends and see how they’re doing. Maybe there’s some good news there. Something that is somehow relevant to you.

You read about the latest protest. People are leaving Facebook because Facebook changed the terms of service and now states that your personal data is theirs and not yours (actually, the situation is worse, but that’s another article). Why? Because Facebook is not actually funded by you. It’s funded by the people who bring you those obnoxious side ads, the ones that say Someone in Burlington has a crush on you. Click here to find out who. Ever wonder why it’s always someone who lives near you? Because the ad got to look in your personal data and find out where you live, and picked a town near you. Facebook shared your personal information with the advertiser, who then came up with a suitable advertisement for you. Facebook will also happily share your age and birthdate with you so advertising can be more “targetted”. They will share the ages and birthdays of your spouse and friends, so advertisers can suggest birthday gifts for them.

So how are you liking free so far?

Our news, our internet, our search engines, our social networks, they’ve all been monetized (isn’t that an awful word? – it means co-opted to make money in a sneaky way). This is the consequence of having these things for “free”. Sadly, free has come to mean free of charge, but not free of consequences.