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
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You seem to be hurt by modern tech, take this, it will give you strength.
What’s infuriating to me is how casual the paywalls have become. Everyone wants a slice, even the folks who make cheat tables for singleplayer video games have an early access patreon. If you’re not getting a paycheck you better make it a side hustle.
Don’t forget to tip your friend when you laugh at their joke, they aren’t doing it for free.
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If it ain’t foss it is a toss
Seriously though the enshitification has been great for community projects
Gimp or krita are free and can do what you are looking for image editing and transparent background.
Free webapps? And who pay for the hosting? You are looking for the wrong target.
Lots of free PDF editing tools. Even web ones of you self host those (Stirling PDF anyone?).
Photopea also!
Honestly web browsers are the best editing tools. Simple and effective
I think many people underestimate how much money it costs to run and maintain stuff. Especially webapps.
Depends on the webapp, traffic, etc. I have an EC2 instance and my own domain that runs me a solid $7 a month. It’s just a tiny little web server. If your web app is structured in a way that the client does the processing, your hosting costs can be pretty cheap.
For instance, rather than editing a PDF on a server, if your web app provides all of the tools to edit the PDF in the client’s browser, the server doesn’t need to be particularly robust. Basically it just needs to hand out those tools to the client.
I can explain it easily for you… For 14.95 a month.
*$1495 a month
Because simply making a functional and well-liked product doesn’t generate enough money for the greedy pigs of the world.
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.
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.
I think you’re complaining that google ranks shitty products higher. Use a better search engine, add +opensource to your query?
Logo: Inkscape?
Pdf editing: libreoffice?
first results on Google
That’s your first problem. Higher ranked results on Google are either ads or “reputable” organizations (corporations). Google isn’t there to help you, it’s to help them.
Does Foxit no longer have a free PDF editor? Apple computers have a built in PDF editor. I mean, it depends on what you mean by “editor” though. If you want to manipulate the elements of a PDF, that’s obviously an advanced function. Yeah. It’s called capitalism. womp womp.
You might find some useful tools here. It’s mostly a list of self-hosted tools but there’s some web tools there too. https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted?tab=readme-ov-file#software
This might be helpful for what you’ve described https://www.photopea.com/ and you can try searching https://alternativeto.net/ for alternatives.
Generally, it just seems like you need to work on your skills to search the internet for what you need. AI is very helpful but not 100% reliable.
As others have mentioned, if it was all free, it would be riddled with ads. You really only have two options, ublock and customize your blocked elements, or pay.
It’s basically the evolution (or devolution?) of the Internet in a capitalist global economy. This is just the next step in the effort to profit off digital Data and communications.
Back in the early 2000s pretty much everything was free to use, and revenue came from passive ads. Then ad blindness and ad blockers kicked in, revenue went down, and the cat and mouse game began of companies trying to find ways of getting clicks and views while the consumer didn’t want to do that. This has escalated over the last 20-odd years.
We’re now at a point where paywalls are fairly effective (for now). So that’s what’s being pushed. Plus, subscriptions and everything-as-a-service is in vogue right now.
I expect that will end when the money-making enshitification of the Internet reaches a critical mass and the economy nosedives for various reasons.
Interesting insight and I have experienced what you talk about in the earlier years. I really feel like we need some sort of free community of tools and resources we can pay for together as a community either through ads or subscription or something that has a bunch of incredible tools people can use. Like $15 a month to cover all server costs for a bunch of free programs any of us could use
There’s an android app called photo studio pro that can do all that. It’s $55 but you get access to it with play pass, which is $35/yr. You also get moonreader+ and a bunch of games, so it’s a decent value.
I’ve been pretty impressed with OnlyOffice for PDFs
Would recommend Foxit over onlyoffice for pdfs since onlyoffice has Russian ties. If you wanna go full FOSS, you probably care about data sovereignty. Libreoffice is pretty good for other office application needs.
Russian based.
Open Source and selfhostable.
