Relax Facebook Fanatics, the Social Network is (and Always Will Be) Free



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Damn it WHY did you have to post this? IT WAS HILARIOUS to watch people lash out like the world was ending because some troll thought it would be funny to tell some chicks that facebook would cost money!!!


Oh silly small minded people.......



Nothing is free, every thing has a price. It may not be in plain site but the cost is there somewhere.


Holly Golightly

Thank goodness for Ad Blocker then... Where everything is for free! FaceBook equals greed. Greed is capitalism. Capitalism is self destructive. Just look at how greed has driven our economy. We lose all privacy just for our friendly advertisers, and then, we pay more despite the fact our talent was outsourced, while we continue to look for jobs. America, ever wonder why there is soo much doom and gloom in the air?





I believe you have a completely twisted view on the matter. Online advertising companies (Facebook, Google, etc.) and the companies which use these advertising services to offer free services (MaximumPC, YouTube, etc.) all offer you free services and products. The only reason these companies can actually turn a revenue in order to continue to offer you these free services, and provide their employee's with a paycheck every month, is because they make money off of displaying advertisements to their user's. They offer their user's a product or service, and the cost of that service to the user is advertisements, allowing them to offer you a product or service without you having to pay them a single penny.

If you don't like the cost of the service or product, then don't use it! By using AdBlocker, you are directly robbing that company of revenue that they are absolutely entitled to. So in reality, AdBlocker equals greed. You are literally stealing a service and robbing MaximumPC, for example, of revenue every page you read while using AdBlocker. The only use of AdBlocker that I condone is using it to block aggressive and invasive advertisements, advertisements that play unwanted sound and/or popup over the content that you actually want to see.

These companies came up with a good idea, and a solid business model to compliment it. Who are you to shit on them for becoming successful? They worked hard to get where they are, and good on them! This "capitalism" is what the Western World is built on. It's the reason the automobile was created, the reason the personal computer was invented.

Also, Google and Facebook are mainly software companies. The overwhelming majority of software developer jobs are kept in North America. Software companies like Facebook and Google outsource some of the lowest fractions of jobs outside of North America than any other industry. And they also pay a massive fraction of North America's total job salaries compared to all other industries. These large corporations like Facebook and Google who you unreasonably hate on, and claim are destroying our economy, employ hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of North American's, and hire more and more every year. And they pay them some of the highest salaries in the world. Companies like Google and Facebook are keeping the world's economy afloat right now.



Holly Golightly

That is not 100% true. Just because you hire someone in America, does not mean you are hiring an American. Sometimes they import talent from other countries and bring them into USA... Microsoft being big on that one. Companies like FaceBook and Google care less about us. It is all about money. That is why they sell your embarrassing privacy to advertisers. Pretty messed up in my opinion. 

As for AdBlockers, hey, I am willing to pay a subscription service that is Ad-Free, but it seems nobody even offers this. I am a vegetarian, I do not like looking at ads showing a hamburger from Mickey Dee's. It is disgusting! I hate being advertised for diet pills or package enlargers when I am not overweight or even a man to begin with. I am an educated consumer and do not need a commercial to enlighten me.

As for ads, websites get paid only when you click the ads. How often are you going to click on them? What are the odds of you whipping out your credit card after seeing an ad. I say pretty slim to nill. Trust me, they do not make that much money, they just want to force people to buy certain things. If they could, they would brainwash people into being spending machines. It is just plain wrong. We need to be more social. Do things from the heart. As fellow Americans, we need to set an example and work together. Not outsource the hell out of each other and keep all the money to ourselves. Because eventually, somebody is going to oursource you.

Capitalism was great, back in the 1950s. Everyone had a job. Nobody ever thought about replacing good 'ol quality American talent. Your employees are your customers. Everything was easy to buy because your salary matched the livable wage so everyone had a good quality of life. But now, more ghettos rise, and Detroit is almost completely down under. Everybody likes foreign brands now. The only few American companies that do employ Americans seem to sell all of your personal information and place ad-trackers onto your electronic gadgets. Like Apple using your GPS to locate you and sell ads based on where you go. FaceBook permanently keep all of your emails, photos and activities, and Google recording your embarrassing searches and making them public for just about anybody to see. It is a damn shame. It is like nobody has morals these days.

Money is the root of all evil... And what do you think capitalism is runned by? I'll give you a hint, it is not by Dunkin. We often discredit the Soviet Union for their inventions and claim them as our own. But inventions can be made without greed in mind. Believe that.


Svetty Parabols

Oh boo hoo. Don't spout that "If our website doesn't bombard you with thousands of different ads, pop-ups, and invisible tracking scripts, our employees won't eat" bullshit. Every website that posts ads is doing it out of pure greed and you know it. They take advantage of every person that comes to their pages. They steal data without informing the user then have the nerve to say "we can't support ourselves if you block our ads". MAXIUMUMPC alone is showing 8 different tracking services, yet do they openly disclose this to its readers without it being hidden somewhere on some obscure page in very tiny print? NO.

Maybe we users should be as greedy as these companies. They may own the content for their sites, but we own the billboard (our computer monitors) for which they are viewed on. Maybe we should start charging for advertising space.

If sites like MAXIMUMPC want to block people blocking their ads, that is fine. There are many other tech-oriented sites out there that are much less ad intrusive. It is time for the consumer to fight back and quit being bent over and reamed.




Personally I hate social networking of any kind with a passion, mostly because it's just too much to keep track of. I can't even keep track of my text messages. I am waiting for the revolution where people abandon facebook and social networking for good.



Nice cartoon, pretty much captures FB in a nuttshell. "You're the product"... I suppose we'll only know the real "cost" of using FB in about 40 years when we're buying a bunch of useless capitalist crap and pushing off the cost onto our grand-kids.

It's not truely "free".

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