I know many people will disagree, but, apart from Meta/Facebook, how anyone expects to use a service 100% free with 0 compromise? Running any business online comes with a lot of spending, especially when the userbase starts growing. If there is a way to make money out of this service and keep it running without having the users pay, it would running ads at least. European union is throwing rules that makes no sense and I'm sure it will effect their statup ecosystem in the future compared to other countries where things like GDPR are not required.

Advertising does not require tracking. In fact in the history of advertising tracking represents a jot in time.

I disagree but only in part.

> I agree with you that having a service 100% free with 0 compromise is not possible, well, it is possible but someone is paying somewhere (see below)

> I disagree that the European union is throwing rules that makes no sense. Privacy should be the default, and if your business is not viable without tracking, perhaps it should not exist.

here is 2 examples of free services I am using daily :

signal : https://moneymodels.org/business-models/how-does-signal-make... (I donated)

mastodon : backed by https://sdf.org/ (I have not donated but wish to do so)

I believe that a more "socialist" approach is possible (pay if you can model so everyone can use the service regardless of their income) It will not scale to the size of facebook, but irc, mastodon and matrix.org already shows that federation works (not without pain).

The startup ecosystem based on advertising money may suffer, but I think this just lead to a better internet in the long run.

Question is whether they will stop tracking you, even if you pay.

I disagree. Europe will at long last have a great tech scene of its own in serious and privacy-respecting services such as Proton, Tutanota, Tresorit, Filen, Internxt, pCloud, Mullvad, NordVPN, Qwant, Mojeek etc.