I think they were extending the original point you were responding to, and remixing your own mixed metaphor of free beer.

In the attention economy, advertising has a cost that is borne by the advertiser and the consumer, up to and including loss of property rights in the case of content relicensure and trespass upon devices leading to excess battery usage, as well as loss of privacy due to geotargeted ads.

>I think they were extending the original point you were responding to, and remixing your own mixed metaphor of free beer.

Perhaps. But having been to many festival environments, I can definitely imagine a tent offering "free beer" that is actually approximately free -- both with, and without a slathering of advertising. (Actually, I don't really have to imagine it -- I've been there and have had that free beer.)

I can't imagine them coming to my house and knocking on my door at night to sell me more of it, though. That's absurd.

>In the attention economy, advertising has a cost that is borne by the advertiser and the consumer, up to and including loss of property rights in the case of content relicensure and trespass upon devices leading to excess battery usage, as well as loss of privacy due to geotargeted ads.

Well, sure. When viewed on a long-enough timeline, it becomes abundantly clear that nothing is actually free, comrade.

I can produce my own beer on a hypothetical plot of land that nobody owns, and that nobody else wants to use, and I can give someone one of these beers. For "free."

But it still has a cost. (And this, too, is an absurd reduction.)

> I can't imagine them coming to my house and knocking on my door at night to sell me more of it, though. That's absurd.

I interpreted that as a tongue-in-cheek hyperbolic metaphor relating to the ways that ad auction networks and other kinds of geofencing and geotargeting allow for deanonymization and reidentification of individuals for conversion tracking and behavioral analysis.

That’s the thing about these technologies - they’re dual-use in the sense that those who see the upsides use them generally with good intentions and ideally with affirmative consent. Just like the relicensed content, though, once the data is collected, the original creators, publishers, and third parties may not be able to control where it ends up, which is a negative externality, I think most would agree.