I tried really hard not to get sucked in to this argument yesterday, but it's still eating at me so I'm going to talk about it here.

Their argument, as best as I can tell, was that small, interconnected networks of people, powered by software, making and sharing media are unsustainable, because someone has to pay for them.

If you're the person who was arguing with me about it, feel free to chime in, but know that I won't see anything you say. I chose to temporarily mute your account for my own mental wellbeing.

They pointed to El Paquete Semanal as a "good example" of a system in which "everyone supports the system equally."

This really got under my skin for several reasons, and I unpacked them in that thread, but I keep having this conversation so I'm going to do it publicly (that makes it easier to block people who are more interested in scoring points than in having a conversation. I'm not here for your point scoring, friend.)

If you're not familiar with El Paquete Semanal, I'll summarize, but you'd be better served to go look in to it yourself. It's kind of neat, honestly. The basic idea is that it's a big sneakernet, updated weekly, with roughly 1TB of material + some message boards, distributed underground in Cuba (where traditional Internet Access is scarce.)

A homegrown underground market Sneakernet based media distribution network sounds like something out of a Doctorow novel or maybe even a Gibson novel, but instead it's a real thing supported by lots of people who don't have an alternative. I dig that.

But it's not some altruistic thing, and it's certainly not something to which everyone contributes equally. It's a tool for the dissemination of capitalist media in a communist nation, and no one is certain who compiles it, or where it comes from.

And, ultimately, people still pay for it. They pay to access the data. The distributors pay to access the feed. Businesses pay to insert advertisements. Sure, it would survive if any one of those (or maybe even a group of those) stopped paying, but it's foolish to paint it as some picture of extreme resiliency or equability when it's neither.