Our Goal

Our home page states that "Our goal, with your help, is to push forward the ability of any person to access various services on the internet for free." But what does this mean for The People's Internet, and what steps are we taking to accomplish it? Let's start with what we mean by our goal. We believe, as an organization, that it is wrong to put the core facets of user-facing functionality in internet services and software behind paywalls. As an extension of this view, we believe it is essential to develop free and open-source software in all user-facing areas of the internet (see Open-Source Software: The Heart of Progression). The propagation of open software can aid developers in providing an increased amount of free services to users based on the open-source code, and it could also prevent the spread of undetected vulnerabilities and code that performs unwanted actions on user devices.

Our belief in free online services does not mean we don't believe people should profit from the internet. Profit may, in some cases, be the only thing keeping free services available and updated. This may seem to contradict. We believe in creators making a profit, not users paying for services. This is where our problem with the current situation on the internet comes in and how we believe we can fix it.

In the current way the internet functions, these paywalls fall on the user and are often the only option to proceed. We know that there are other ways to make this money without forced user payment. Despite these alternatives often being challenging in the short term to the software providers, they consistently prove more profitable in a program's future. Advertising and "Convenience" paywalls are the most common and generally most desirable methods of monetizing open software.

We must admit users hate ads. However, required monthly payments are hated multitudes more. Although it may slightly harm user experience, it does less so than mandatory recurring payments, and if done unintrusively (see Flaws and Solutions With Advertising) it will almost invariably result in a larger user base. Advertisements can be combined with an ads-removal paywall (assuming reasonable pricing), an example of a Convenience paywall that doesn't harm user access. We believe that paywalls should not limit the standard usage in any way, excluding charging for above-normal usage of server-dependent services, as such usage may cost the provider a disproportionate amount of money with little benefit. Convenience paywalls can be utilized by charging for features that exist only to speed up or enhance the user's process without blocking any additional functionality that wouldn't otherwise be possible, a method that allows a service’s openness to be preserved while still monetizing high-volume users.

This may sound good, but it is reasonable to wonder what we are doing to accomplish this view and what the incentive is to follow along. The most obvious of our work is informing, as can be observed in articles such as this one. However, we are also working to create programs that follow these ideas. We hope to continue designing such programs and supporting others in the future. For those who create open software, it is possible to see a loss at the start, as money from profit sources is insufficient to cover backend costs (see Issues With Paid Services). However, the future investment in this path is much more significant. User bases will grow much faster, so even a small profit margin per user could mean massive results from such a service, and this strategy has proven successful for many major tech companies.

And finally, we must express the true importance of the future impacts resulting from our goal. The internet is expanding into just about every area of life, and this expansion could only grow exponentially. We are in the middle of an upturn in our world caused by our acceleration of innovation, and it is inevitable that just about everybody's life will be changed by this shift. The question we must ask is, if the people of this generation have the power to change everybody's way of life for generations to come, how should we use that power? It is a decision that must be made quickly. Things can stay similar to how they were, but we can also give power to the everyday person through an open internet. That is a decision we have already made. We encourage you to join us.