&gt; What makes you think that a public ISP&#x2F;whatever would rely on &#x27;ever-bigger threats&#x27; for budget?<p>Perhaps I was unclear. Facebook will violate your privacy to sell ads. The government agency will violate your privacy to justify its budget. In both cases your privacy is violated, with the additional point that you can&#x27;t quit using the government agency and if you get in their grill too much they can have you killed.<p>&gt; As far as actual examples, I&#x27;m pretty confident in saying that some of the organizations that produce the highest-quality media content are publicly funded. NPR or the BBC are two examples that pop into my head.<p>They&#x27;re very high-quality, <i>and</i> they also generally represent a single minority point of view in their societies. The two qualities are not mutually exclusive.