>> That is how it is today. But does it have to be like that ? What is the minimum revenue per user required for service like FB to run.
> Minimum doesn't matter, the only question is if it's more profitable than the current approach.
Only if you think strictly inside the box.
The real problem here is one is a misalignment of incentives: Zuckerberg is managing Facebook to maximize the metric he's being evaluated on (profit and wealth), not the value provided to society.
I'd start with treating users as partners, and not cattle.
Which is my point. It's easy to say "just force them to optimize for value to society" and then ignore what that really entails in practice. And what giving someone the power to do that tends to cause.
Actually solving the related problems and making things actually better is probably possible but it's messy and hard and complicated.
> Actually solving the related problems and making things actually better is probably possible but it's messy and hard and complicated.
What you describe is politics, and it's inescapable.
The issue however is that the users advertisers care about are the ones with disposable income. The users most likely to opt out of ads are the ones with disposable income. Thus the marginal cost to Facebook from such users is significantly more than $9/quarter.