Just in case, FB ARPU in US in Q4 2017 was $27. People who talk about "i ready to pay 10$ per year if im not tracked and not exposed to ads" _seriously_ underestimate FB money-printing ability.
Think about it, FB makes almost as much as NFLX per US user (admittedly in Q4, the hottest quarter in advertising), but you dont need to enter your credit card. At all.
There is no large audience in any developed market willing to pay $15+ per month for Facebook just to remove ads.
The problem is getting from zero to critical mass with that model. Though I guess that doesn't stop a lot of other companies with less plausible revenue sources from getting seemingly endless money thrown at them.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think it would ever work, because I may value my privacy at more than a few bucks a month, but it's a near certainty that the vast majority of the population disagrees with me. They don't see the cost there, so they ignore it. By the time they ever realize what it was they gave up and for how little, it's too late.
But you just said you just need your family and some friends. That doesn't sound like critical mass is needed. Just convince your family and some friends to join with you, and enjoy the service together. Then your friends can invite their friends and family, and so on and so forth.
Yeah I understand the goal of capitalist companies is to endlessly print more money for the shareholders and the promise of ever better advertising enables FB to keep pulling in the dough. But maybe something like social media shouldn't operate in that context.
Maybe there needs to be an old-lawyer to SME translator doing the talking too. This person questions a SME on behalf of the senators and they can speak up or seek clarification when needed. Proofread questions and competent speech.
And right there is where your plan fails.
Absolutely! Github, Dropbox, etc, that's how tons of "freemium" companies work.
That's how WhatsApp started to fund itself, I remember there being a nominal annual charge ( £1 ) for some users but not for all. There didn't seem to be any obvious rule as to who was pinged to pay-up, perhaps it really was random.
But that was discontinued after they were acquired.
I think a lot of these questions have been like that, but ultimately the senators couldn't figure out how to phrase what they were getting at and both sides floundered to understand what was going on.
edit: as an example was another senator, "mr funny guy", who was trying to ask if facebook tracks how people use other apps or devices, I'm still not sure, even when they aren't logged in or something. I saw 3 possible questions that he was trying to ask and they all would have been good but I don't think either of them understood what he was asking so they went back and forth uselessly. Could have been some hard hitting commentary on the bundling of permissions, or the bundling of fb with a phone, or the ability for fb to track other app usage, or the ability of fb to track users on websites even when not logged in. oh well.