People just don't want to pay for a subscription to the web services they use.
Web services constantly treat users poorly, further encouraging them not to pay.
Advertising is an established and "accepted" way to make tons of money.
We're just going to keep seeing this pattern of a new service being released, users adopting without paying, companies resorting to user hostile ways of making money, and users eventually abandoning the product for a new one.
Yes but paying is not going to save us from this pattern. The corps are just going to milk the users via both subscriptions and ads.
And then the users will flock to the new product anyway, as you said. But with paying for a subscription it's just more money ending up where it shouldn't: in the hands of corporations.
Social media desperately needs a non-advertising and non-subscription business model.
Relying on a billionaire to subsidize losses out of the goodness of his heart because he believes in the importance of a free and open virtual public square is not a sustainable business model. Nor is relying on advertisers who demand ever more intrusive ads and ever more censorship of opinions they dislike. Nor is relying on subscriptions because a platform that excludes people who don't pay isn't useful. So maybe it is a public good that needs to be run by either the government or a charity that rich people fund to get out of paying taxes?
Regardless, a neutral social media platform where people can speak to the general public and say what they believe without any favoritism on the part of the platform towards any viewpoint is as essential for maintaining democracy in the 21st century as the free press was in the 18th and 19th centuries and as the Fairness Doctrine for television and radio was in the 20th century. Society has to find a way to make that happen in a manner that can be sustained permanently.
I guess what you are describing is the Fediverse (mastodon, lemmy, etc). Federated networks not supported by ads nor subscriptions, but by governments, organizations and volunteers. Whether the fediverse is globally scalable is yet to be seen, but it already exists and is thriving. However, people still resist joining it because of network effects, and to some extent for the lack of certain features.
> How much would it cost to fund an open source alternative ecosystem?
Lots of people were throwing this out there when twitter got bought by Musk, like "how hard is it to build a twitter clone anyway?"
Incredibly difficult and expensive at scale. Aside from infrastructure costs and maintenance, which would be considerable, you'd also have the content moderation problem which can spiral out of control quickly depending on which locality's laws you are possibly violating (it's different everywhere), etc. Many many millions of dollars at least, and to get to IG/Facebook scale with billions of daily users, I'd wager a lot more.
> How much would it cost to fund an open source alternative ecosystem?
It already exists in the form of the Fediverse. You have alternatives to twitter (mastodon), reddit (lemmy), youtube (peertube), instagram (pixelfed) and others, all interconnected but distributed, open source, and without ads. Apparently it costs less than 100$ a month to run a fairly large instance, but I imagine that cost would grow as the Fediverse as a whole continues growing. It's not without its downsides, but it's there.
If people would stop fluttering from one walled garden to the next, and embrace an open Web, they wouldn't have these problems.
It's not entirely the users' fault, but people need to learn to be smart consumers -- er, participants -- because many business leaders and techies have conflicts of interest wrt an open Web.
The Open Web does not necessarily solve this problem. Someone has to pay for hosting and the time spent needing to moderate and ensure content is legal.
While there are a number of enthusiasts willing to put up with the cost and time to run a service with the general public, it's not sustainable either.
How many people actually chipped in to pay for hosting costs 15 years ago?
Good. With all the services becoming increasingly painful to use, it makes it much easier for me to quit them. I still procrastinate on Instagram and a little bit on LinkedIn but both are losing appeal by the minute so I suspect I will be able to let go of both soon.
I use modified IPAs of any apps that serve me ads. It’s always weird when I use / see these apps on others devices and notice the amount of ads that get chucked at them.
Readit News
Web services constantly treat users poorly, further encouraging them not to pay.
Advertising is an established and "accepted" way to make tons of money.
We're just going to keep seeing this pattern of a new service being released, users adopting without paying, companies resorting to user hostile ways of making money, and users eventually abandoning the product for a new one.
They might provide you some kind of mental entertainment, but certainly don’t tangibly benefit you (the nourishment of fine dining not withstanding).
And then the users will flock to the new product anyway, as you said. But with paying for a subscription it's just more money ending up where it shouldn't: in the hands of corporations.
Relying on a billionaire to subsidize losses out of the goodness of his heart because he believes in the importance of a free and open virtual public square is not a sustainable business model. Nor is relying on advertisers who demand ever more intrusive ads and ever more censorship of opinions they dislike. Nor is relying on subscriptions because a platform that excludes people who don't pay isn't useful. So maybe it is a public good that needs to be run by either the government or a charity that rich people fund to get out of paying taxes?
Regardless, a neutral social media platform where people can speak to the general public and say what they believe without any favoritism on the part of the platform towards any viewpoint is as essential for maintaining democracy in the 21st century as the free press was in the 18th and 19th centuries and as the Fairness Doctrine for television and radio was in the 20th century. Society has to find a way to make that happen in a manner that can be sustained permanently.
People pay for Prime. It got stuffed full of ads.
People pay for Netflix. It -- surprisingly but shouldn't have been? -- got ads.
Some services even try to eliminate the paid ad-free version. (To ensure ad audience demographic includes people that buy things?)
It's not clear that people don't want to pay for subscriptions as much as providers don't want to leave ad money on the table.
How much would it cost to fund an open source alternative ecosystem? Much less than it costs to run Instagram/tiktok/Facebook...
Lots of people were throwing this out there when twitter got bought by Musk, like "how hard is it to build a twitter clone anyway?"
Incredibly difficult and expensive at scale. Aside from infrastructure costs and maintenance, which would be considerable, you'd also have the content moderation problem which can spiral out of control quickly depending on which locality's laws you are possibly violating (it's different everywhere), etc. Many many millions of dollars at least, and to get to IG/Facebook scale with billions of daily users, I'd wager a lot more.
It already exists in the form of the Fediverse. You have alternatives to twitter (mastodon), reddit (lemmy), youtube (peertube), instagram (pixelfed) and others, all interconnected but distributed, open source, and without ads. Apparently it costs less than 100$ a month to run a fairly large instance, but I imagine that cost would grow as the Fediverse as a whole continues growing. It's not without its downsides, but it's there.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40575404
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40574912
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40566424
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40569808
It's not entirely the users' fault, but people need to learn to be smart consumers -- er, participants -- because many business leaders and techies have conflicts of interest wrt an open Web.
While there are a number of enthusiasts willing to put up with the cost and time to run a service with the general public, it's not sustainable either.
How many people actually chipped in to pay for hosting costs 15 years ago?
I don't know what capital-O "Open Web" is. Unfortunately, "distributed" has been tainted by cryptographic token scammers.
I mean start with the original ideas of the Web, and go from there.
Things don't have to look like centralized grabs of user eyeballs (along with moderation), proprietary or not.
Some more discussion among others: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40574912