Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?
When you put it this way, it's really quite remarkable how tenuous our hold is on even paid for digital services.There is really nothing you could do with a car to prompt the car maker to take it from you. And the state will only take it if you break the law in particularly dangerous ways.When it comes to other possessions it's even harder for anyone to take them away from you. If I take a kitchen knife and stab someone with it I will go to prison for sure, but I don't think they will take the knife away. They definitely won't ban me from buying knives.But when it's a digital service, even something as crucial as a banking service, it's seen as normal that you can lose them for posting offensive things on twitter. Perhaps it's because we haven't had these digital services for long enough to consider them as really belonging to us, so we accept that they can be taken away at the slightest provocation.