I think there’s an uptick at the moment of paid online services. We’re getting four models:

1. Free commercial services supported by advertising.

2. Ad-free commercial services supported by subscriptions.

3. Open-source distributed services.

Arguably there’s a fourth category: free, ad-free commercial services supported by VC money to grow until reaches critical mass and pivots into a paid/advertising model.

The second option caters to a smaller crowd who are willing to pay for a better experience, but a “smaller crowd” defies conventional wisdom about social network effects. It’s an interesting experiment though. There are now dozens of news aggregators, streaming media services, gaming platforms, etc., competing for our monthly disposable income, so it may be a tough sell.

The NYT covered the shift towards subscription services recently: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/13/magazine/inte...

I'd like a non-evil social network, but there is already too many "only £10 a month" for the sake of arranging my pixels in amusing ways.

If it was a traditional company I'd agree, but it's a not-for-profit that also runs Wikipedia so I see it as a donation toward that. WT.social is just a perk.

Yeah, way to expensive. A "pay-what-you-want" model with a minium of 2$-4$ a month would be much more successfull, I feel.