Often either radically criticized as being (yet another) disseminator of capitalist decadence, or idealized as a forum for the unlimited exchange of free information, the internet can actually be seen as both of these things simultaneously. It is a space that enables the co-existence of market and gift economies, and people's simultaneous engagement in them. That is, on the internet, one can be both a consumer of capitalist commodities and an anarcho-communist within a gift economy, while, of course, also being a citizen of their state.

Undoubtedly, both, commercial companies and individuals benefit from the gift economy. In The High-Tech Gift Economy , Richard Barbrook quite pessimistically argues that most people only participate in the gift economy for very pragmatic reasons, and not with any (conscious) revolutionary ideals.