I'd agree. Big tech is used all day, every day. People aren't browsing porn sites while they're at work (at least, most aren't). However, I can't imagine how many people are browsing at night.
But they are very much browsing their fantasy sports gambling sites.
And they browse porn at work more than you think.
Story time:
Stupid youngster me is tasked with getting the "tape out" of one of our microprocessors designs to Taiwan. I dutifully calculate that at the current rate of upload, it's going to take almost a week in spite of the fact that we have a solid OC-3 that should make short work of it. That's not going to fly. So ... off to IT I go...
"Hi, Mr. IT, I've got a bandwidth problem getting this tapeout to Taiwan. Can you bump my traffic in priority so I can get this out?"
Tap ... tap ... tap.
"Sigh. Yes, Mr. Exuberant Youngster, we can solve this. Give it an hour."
"Thanks." I troop back up to my desk.
5 minutes later a global email appears from Mr. IT ...
"Hi, folks. We're starting a system audit sweep of all the computers for inappropriate access. Yes, you know what that means, all those videos that you shouldn't be watching at work ... yeah, stop that, post haste. We should be done 48 hours from now. Thanks."
A quite remarkable amount of clicking in the cubicle farm suddenly begins. And, of course, my bandwidth suddenly jumps through the roof.
I ... am ... agog.
I walk back up to Mr. IT: "Erm ... thanks. But, what just ... happened? And ... why?"
Mr. IT, with a huge grin replies:
"No problem. You needed bandwidth; so I got you bandwidth. As for why? Well, I can go through the work of prioritizing your traffic which requires that I log into the external gateway, set up rules, get them correct, let you upload, remember the reset the rules and not hose the entire company while doing so. Or I can get all dipshits watching porn at work to stop for a day or two by announcing a system audit. Which do you think is easier and less error prone for me?"
Youngster me got an important lesson that day that there are often multiple solutions to the same problem.
Using Big Tech and paying money are two different things. A US user is worth about $13 each quarter to Facebook. A customer on a cam site will pay more than that for a minute private show probably. One porn DVD, etc.
That's true. Honestly, when I was thinking about the topic, I didn't consider cam sites, as that's not something I'm too familiar with myself... I assumed most users (or useds, as Stallman would say), were just browsing the billions of free material.
