The free things are the most expensive!

[AYOBA]

Google and TikTok may seem free, but every click and scroll you make gets packaged into a "user profile" and sold to advertisers. Take Facebook, for example—it makes about $50 per user per year just from their data. In the internet age, if you're not paying for the product, you are the product.

Honestly, free things are very expensive. The social media you mentioned earlier, where they always visited 24 hours without a single profit, and we still continue wasting our data without getting any backup, let's take a look at TikTok. Imagine that those who are using our data to watch their comedies are the ones who benefits a lot , and there is much of our data wasted.

But you see, some platforms that do not consume our data; they're the ones who pay pass because without using much of our data, we can cash out immediately, but the free things that they cannot achieve are always expensive; I wonder why.

[Obulis]

Google and TikTok may seem free, but every click and scroll you make gets packaged into a "user profile" and sold to advertisers. Take Facebook, for example—it makes about $50 per user per year just from their data. In the internet age, if you're not paying for the product, you are the product.

In the context of the phrase " the free things are the most expensive" I would have thought you will be talking about, water, air, oxygen and the rest of the free things God created for mankind. However in addressing the free things you listed, they are basically not free, these are people's businesses you mentored, for you to use their facility, you have to pay for it, those apps were not invented from the beginning to be use on free bases, for the inventor to build it and put it on the app store, he definitely paid for it to be there, so you the end user too will have to pay for it.

I was also thinking those free things aside the ones listed @spaceman {air, water, trees and on} would be kindness, love, forgiveness, friendship, happiness , peace and on. Google, tiktok, Facebook and more are business oriented if not from the beginning, at least for so many years now.
At the least of it, you need data to browse and that is cash.
And then subscription of one kind or the other.
Just name different ways that this platforms are doing their businesses making money..

[ndutndut]

Google and TikTok may seem free, but every click and scroll you make gets packaged into a "user profile" and sold to advertisers. Take Facebook, for example—it makes about $50 per user per year just from their data. In the internet age, if you're not paying for the product, you are the product.

I don’t see how you as an individual could be made the product.

Even services like the ones you e mentioned are products that are bought and sold. Of course it’s never free, you pay for internet and you use the internet to access these services. They collect their tariff from the clicks and that’s payment. No one says it’s free but, it’s offered at a fair price that you don’t even notice. You just enjoy the services they provide and that’s it. For some monetized pages in some social medias, you get to pay to access certain features. It’s just a new world and how it works.

More precisely in the modern era like today, increasingly sophisticated technology to earn money will be easier if you use social media platforms, you don't need a lot of capital, you only need skills to create content and so on.

So actually nothing is free, we access tiktok, youtube, facebook and the like need internet and the internet must be paid for. Maybe what OP means by the technology that is developing now, we don't need a lot of capital to earn money, just by focusing on social media we can earn money. Almost everything in this world to earn money, nothing is free, at least without cost or capital we need to try, and that effort is indirectly also capital.

[Republikcoin.com]

I was also thinking those free things aside the ones listed @spaceman {air, water, trees and on} would be kindness, love, forgiveness, friendship, happiness , peace and on. Google, tiktok, Facebook and more are business oriented if not from the beginning, at least for so many years now.
At the least of it, you need data to browse and that is cash.
And then subscription of one kind or the other.
Just name different ways that this platforms are doing their businesses making money..

Now all social media platforms can indeed be used to make money as long as we have the skills to use them and have unique ways that we can create to upload to them. Because with the many unique things that we can produce, of course there will be many people who want to visit our social media to see and watch the content we create. In addition, everyone can also use the social media platform to sell certain products in order to make money like on tiktok and other marketplace platforms because it can be done for free without having to spend a lot of capital at first.

[Cookdata]

Google and TikTok may seem free, but every click and scroll you make gets packaged into a "user profile" and sold to advertisers. Take Facebook, for example—it makes about $50 per user per year just from their data. In the internet age, if you're not paying for the product, you are the product.

This stats is not accurate. I have a Facebook account I created in 2012, just a name with a dumb email and some details that are not even correct, there is no way you will tell me that they are making $50 for every profile on Facebook. Perhaps, they make money from accounts that are active that post things on their feed and show up on the app everyday and that amount might be different depending on the location, not all countries advertise on Facebook.

If you look at TikTok, they don't advertise in some countries and without ads, they can't make money from such places. I think only US and some other few countries makes royalty from their content creation, that's because there are people that runs ads on the platform. No ads, even with personalized users, they wouldn't be able to make money from it unless they want to sell users data for some companies and it's a crime but I don't doubt it.

[l99l]

Instead of being a product in these media, you can also market something, this is not easy, you need to develop some skills and spend time. The things you say are things everyone knows.
If you are uncomfortable, you can not use it, this choice is yours and you are free. In the coming year, decentralized social media networks will become more widespread, media that will protect your data and privacy.
They exist now but they are not getting attention, migration will increase as time goes by.

[ITExpert]

Google and TikTok may seem free, but every click and scroll you make gets packaged into a "user profile" and sold to advertisers. Take Facebook, for example—it makes about $50 per user per year just from their data. In the internet age, if you're not paying for the product, you are the product.

Honestly, free things are very expensive. The social media you mentioned earlier, where they always visited 24 hours without a single profit, and we still continue wasting our data without getting any backup, let's take a look at TikTok. Imagine that those who are using our data to watch their comedies are the ones who benefits a lot , and there is much of our data wasted.

Social media has affects on every aspect of our life. It generates revenue from advertising, subscriptions and data. We waste our time on it, scrolling all day and still get nothing in return, except mental health disorders. Social media has inerference in our life, impacting our physical abilities and its addictive content has made us lazy. It seems to be free for us but thats not a true. We have to pay it in the form of our personal data that they use for promotions and advertising.Social media is like a swamp where we are sinking. It has changed the lifestyle and people have forgotten their aim of life. One day we will observe its bad side but it will be very late. Social media has good aspects as well, like we can get the knowledge about everything in this world.

[shinratensei_]

Instead of being a product in these media, you can also market something, this is not easy, you need to develop some skills and spend time. The things you say are things everyone knows.
If you are uncomfortable, you can not use it, this choice is yours and you are free. In the coming year, decentralized social media networks will become more widespread, media that will protect your data and privacy.
They exist now but they are not getting attention, migration will increase as time goes by.

honestly if decentralized social media will truly be a thing in the future, that'd be great, but most of content always stay in centralized social media where they use their user as the product for advertisement and the fact that right now they are starting to incentivizes their user for using their social media through ads and so on might be such a huge challenge for decentralized social media to find user growth.

I don't really think decentraliezd social media can be a big thing in the future but if it somehow gaining attention that'd be great.

as of now we have no choice but to use centralized social media knowing well our data being gathered for them to sell.

[hafiztalha]

Instead of being a product in these media, you can also market something, this is not easy, you need to develop some skills and spend time. The things you say are things everyone knows.
If you are uncomfortable, you can not use it, this choice is yours and you are free. In the coming year, decentralized social media networks will become more widespread, media that will protect your data and privacy.
They exist now but they are not getting attention, migration will increase as time goes by.

There are many platforms through which many people are earning good. Like we know about You Tube which is providing us content in which we are interested and there are many people who are Investing time and money on YouTube channels and after they will earn but they will earn by focus of their audience because at that time ,the person who has traffic is rich people. There are many people are taking benefits of  product owners because owners give them free products to use and also they are paying for their face value. We are watching Tik Tokers who are rich and these are rich because these invested lot of time on traffic building.In the past , people were rich because of only their wealth and land but in that time , person is rich who has audience.

[Y3shot]

Google and TikTok may seem free, but every click and scroll you make gets packaged into a "user profile" and sold to advertisers. Take Facebook, for example—it makes about $50 per user per year just from their data. In the internet age, if you're not paying for the product, you are the product.

Nice one, from the topic I was thinking it'll be on things beyond monetary value. But back to the context of your write up. Sincerely many persons use social media to pass away time, boredom and sometimes depression. They're not really bothered about how much they pay to use such apps and watch other people entertain them. Many persons have accounts on social media and have never made any post simply because they're spectactors. These engagements makes whiling away time easier and eases their stress even. The owners of contents at least deserve to get paid for helping others ease stress, tension and forget some certain challenges.

[Juicyhome]

Google and TikTok may seem free, but every click and scroll you make gets packaged into a "user profile" and sold to advertisers. Take Facebook, for example—it makes about $50 per user per year just from their data. In the internet age, if you're not paying for the product, you are the product.

Nice one, from the topic I was thinking it'll be on things beyond monetary value. But back to the context of your write up. Sincerely many persons use social media to pass away time, boredom and sometimes depression. They're not really bothered about how much they pay to use such apps and watch other people entertain them. Many persons have accounts on social media and have never made any post simply because they're spectactors. These engagements makes whiling away time easier and eases their stress even. The owners of contents at least deserve to get paid for helping others ease stress, tension and forget some certain challenges.

He is not disputing the fact that content creators do not deserve their earns for bringing up  ideas to the public space, he is just trying to tell us that, nothing is free online, any pictures and videos you click cost you money. Even most courses they posted online as free isn't free in real context, you will watch it on their platforms and it will cost you more with your data. There is big money on social media space than gas and oil, that is why you see content creators living the best of life, they earn huge  sum through social media than they do with show. That's  why everyone are doing content today. its more profitable than daily trader and school certificate, Africa youths are doing well through social media imagine Africa without social media money, the youths would have indulge in social  vices, but social media has been able to stop many things among the youth.

[libert19]

Google and TikTok may seem free, but every click and scroll you make gets packaged into a "user profile" and sold to advertisers. Take Facebook, for example—it makes about $50 per user per year just from their data. In the internet age, if you're not paying for the product, you are the product.

I am aware of this and that's why I deleted my FB account long ago and I have never used tiktok, I also have things disabled in my Google account which they have mercifully provided to not track us but despite that I often see relevant ads so I assume these options given are for namesake.

But, let's be honest, we can't live without Google these days, no other search engines come close to it. So, I am not going to stop using it because they farm my data — I find it useful and I would be kind of worse off without it.