I don’t get how we are in the year 2025, most advanced technology we have ever had in human existence… And everything is behind a paywall. Literally everything. Whenever I search the web for a solution as an individual person, not a business or Mega Corporation, just a simple person trying to do a few creative things… Everything is behind a paywall
For example, I want to create a logo image for a personal Tableau dashboard that has a transparent background. Just a struggling person trying to find work and show what I’m capable of making. You know what I find? Everything is behind a payroll. One of the first results on Google that can actually help you is canva! But everything on canva is behind a paywall! You want to resize your document? Transparent background? Paywall. Okay then what if I go to a website to remove the background? There’s lots of them on the Internet that say they are free. Sorry, those are all behind paywalls as well. You have to upload your image to them and then by credits but they don’t tell you that when you get to the website…
Also, editing PDF files… Year 2025, you cannot possibly edit a PDF file for free, and most of the PDF readers out there or PDF viewers have some sort of clickbait this is free! Except that is not free, it’s behind a paywall and you’ll find that out eventually…
I think we are all very excited to see what AI can finally do for Humanity because I am so damn sick of everything being
Why do you expect to receive someone else’s work for free? Part of the reason the web has become so enshitified is that no one is willing to pay for anything anymore. We all expect everything to be “ad supported”, and then we act shocked when everything is covered in ads.
That said, there are usually open source alternatives for most software packages out there. They may not have complete feature parity or have quite the same slick UI as the commercial products. But, they do tend to be both free in terms of cost and ads. E.g for image editing, there is Gimp. It’s not going to replace Adobe Photoshop in professional spaces anytime soon. But, for a home user who isn’t willing to shell out the Adobe Tax, it’s a reasonable choice.
But, the reason so much is paywalled is because everything takes time and money to create. Someone has to pay that cost. Maybe it’s advertisers, maybe it’s a dedicated team of volunteers. But increasingly, creators are asking users to pay directly.
sometimes the shit they make you pay for is just stupid. Like- right now I’m fed up with all search engines right now- EXCEPT FOR ONE, and that’s Kagi “Oh use Kagi, Use kagi bro, its great, its awesome!”
Mofcker I go to the page and signed up or whatever, the thing is amazing, it actually is straight up. BUT LOW AND FUCKING BEHOLD- “if you want more than 100 search attempts, you have to subscribe to us :3” The prices aint bad at all but WHY THE FUCK WOULD I WANNA PAY TO USE A SEARCH ENGINE??! Sorry for the caps lock but good lord! Is that gonna become a new mainstream thing for all search engines to do now?! What if google started doing that shit!? “Oh we’ll let you search whatever you want as many times as you want, but its all going to be things kinda related to your searches. If you want exact answers and real accuracy, you have to pay us 25 a month, but if you want us to not sell your data, then you need to pay 50 a month.” WTF??!
its not the fact that you gotta pay for stuff now, its the fact that you’ll subscribe to service only to find out you gotta go through 4 different subscription types just to get the full experience; and none of them have the option of you just buying it one time permanently. One person made an audio splitter website and its fuckin awesome. I don’t have to pay for SHIT and its so good that I use it when making music, but for some reason everything else wants me to pay? And sometimes It’s not even that good, I’ll just pay for something and get scammed outta my own money. Shit like that drives people to Piracy. remember when Netflix was just simple?? “Pay this amount a month and you can watch whatever you want, when you want, and get 0 ads.” NOW it’ll make you pay for the service, AND THERES STILL ADS, and to get 0 ads and watch all the movies you want you gotta go through several fucking subscription tiers, not only that but some stuff is only available on OTHER streaming services, which are ALSO behind 13 different paywalls… This is why I just started pirating things unless its truly worth it. OFC I dont pirate from small devs or creators, thats just dumb. But mf If I can get Kagi for free I’m gonna. Since when the fuck did I have to PAY to search the internet?
I have seen ads on the internet for over twenty years. The enshitification is not because of ads, but because of the will of a few big companies to extract as much money from the internet as possible, without wanting to give anything in return and without even contributing in any way.
Edit: the OP however, should really learn to use a free photoshop alternative for the logo creation thing.
For the most part none of the apps work properly.
We used to make all sorts of things just for the joy in making it, and it cost money to do it.
Sometimes you work for free because of passion. Like a personal project.
Many of those apps were built on things produced and distributed for free. I would say they are, usually, just a fancy front end on some OSS library. That’s not without value, good interfaces are hard, but lets not pretend they’re doing all the work themselves, and they certainly aren’t eager to reinvest any of that money into the free software that made their shit possible.