Practice: Think Twice About the Cost of Free
A four-week experiment in living without “free” services
We are inundated with free. If you think about the websites you visit most often, how many of them are “free”? Google, Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. Zoom out a bit… how about the browser you use to access them?
For this week’s practice, I’m going to look at the business models behind these products and make different choices where I can.
If it’s free, your attention is the product.
As I discussed in my post on privacy a few weeks ago, these companies make money by learning as much as they can about you, packaging that information, and selling access to your attention. When we let them build near-complete profiles of us, we give up chunks of autonomy. That’s not hyperbole. There are massive financial incentives to subtly steer our psychology toward spending. The smartest people in the world work on nudges—keeping the Amazon boxes flowing to your doorstep, curbside pickup at Target hopping, and your thumb flicking through autoplaying shopping videos that drop you into one-click checkout.
The experiment (4 weeks)
Goal: Whenever possible, stop using ad-funded, behavior-shaping “free” services from for-profit companies, and replace them with paid, privacy-respecting or community-governed alternatives.
What I’m changing (and how):
Search: Switch to Kagi, a paid, ad-free search engine.
Email: I moved to Proton earlier, so I’m already covered here. No ads, no selling data; I pay for the service.
Feeds / doomscrolling: Replace feed time with paid news and books.
Browser: I'm going to try out Orion+.
How I’ll measure:
Friction log: Each time I hit a wall and “need” a free service, I’ll note it and decide whether to tolerate it, pay, or skip it.
I'll keep notes as I go about what's working and what I'm struggling with.
Exceptions (on purpose):
Free & Open Source Software (FOSS): I’ll keep using and preferring it. “Free” here means freedom, not price—the freedom to use, study, modify, and share the software. That matters because the incentives are aligned with users, not advertisers. See the Free Software Foundation’s four freedoms and the Open Source Definition.
Apple ecosystem: I’m exempting Apple’s first-party apps during this trial. Apple emphasizes privacy and largely makes money on hardware; I’m comfortable keeping Apple Maps, Screen Time, etc., for this experiment.
In-car navigation: I’ll use my car’s built-in navigation (Google Maps) without signing in. (I just want to get from A to B.)
Perfection isn’t the goal—awareness is.
A simple playbook (join me if you want)
Step 1: List your “free” defaults. Search, email, maps, browser, file storage, notes, calendar, photo backup, news, social, password manager, ad blocker.
Step 2: Pick 2–3 easy swaps.
Search → Kagi (paid).
Email → Proton (paid).
News/social → RSS or newsletters you choose (bonus if you pay creators you love).
Step 3: Set a “values budget.” Decide what you’re willing to pay monthly to stop being the product. Generally it only takes a few dollars a month to replace a "free" provider.
Step 4: Keep a friction log.
Step 5: Debrief each Sunday. What got easier? What felt worse? Where did I backslide?
What I expect (and what I’m curious about)
Less noise, a bit more mental clarity. If I remove the ad-shaped funnels, do my “oops I bought it” moments drop?
A small cost, a big mental shift. Paying even a little reframes the relationship: I become the customer again.
Friction in weird places. Some free services are sticky for a reason. I’ll document where the pain is real and whether it’s worth it.
I’ll report back in four weeks with the tally: what stuck, what didn’t, what surprised me, and how much it cost.