Please read my conclusion where I commented on this exact point.

So if I understand correctly, you’re arguing that making a product worse is good because it makes it easier for competition to beat it?

I mean, I guess, but it still means the product that got worse got worse, and didn’t get better.

Your conclusion where you said this was a good thing? I did read it; I thought it was a shit take, so I commented.

For sure. There's no way they'd break even at $1/year per user, let alone turn a profit, unless they're also running ads for those users.

I wonder how much of that $1 they get after payment processing fees and such.

~$0.67 cents without negotiated processing fees (ex: Stripe's rack rate is 2.9% processing fee + 30 cents per transaction)

There is no way they would hide ads for users who pay $1 a year. That would be a bargain.

My guess is that they’re starting with $1/year to test the waters and see who would pay. Maybe they want users to get hooked on those extra features so they can up the price.

I think X should get credit for this move anyways. Them charging for access may make more people comfortable with the idea of paying for social networking, so that in the future more people will join when new social networks are made that don’t mine the data of the people

> Them charging for access may make more people comfortable with the idea of paying for social networking, so that in the future more people will join when new social networks are made that don’t mine the data of the people

Won’t that just make people get used to paying and having their data sold? Why would future companies not follow that same model?

> Why would future companies not follow that same model?

Because some companies are happy to be profitable without having to squeeze out ever last cent possible of their customers.

When enough people are willing to pay for social media, someone will realize that there is room to build a business that doesn’t abuse its users and they will have enough money to run it.

paying customers is the most desirable target audience for Ads.

That's optimistic thinking. I don't believe that will happen even if people realize that it is possible. Because tracking is not detrimental enough to user experience that people move off of existing platforms.

Then those happy companies get sold to people that _do_ want to squeeze out the last cent possible of their customers. And then they will start collecting their user's data and do nefarious things with it

I donate monthly to my Mastodon instance, so it can afford to be an ad-free space. It doesn't take that much.

WhatsApp did the $1/yr thing a long time ago. Here is an article from 2016 about them scrapping it.

https://venturebeat.com/mobile/whatsapp-subscription/

This might be different though because this is led by Elon Musk, who has always somehow managed to come out well despite bad looking decisions,

Like pard68 though, I have no skin in the game and have also given up on social media.

... "This bad idea is actually good because Naughty Old Mr Car is magic" is a _hell_ of a take. Perhaps companies should simply have their policies dictated by that octopus that predicted World Cup game outcomes.

Exactly this.

I would be entirely supportive of a model where a social network (not social media) was established with modest annual fees with the condition that the usual privacy violation and targeting and engagement hacking wasn't going to happen.

But that's clearly not what this is.

i would pay for this.

You mean like this?: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13387723

(app.net)

Yeah I never claimed such a thing is a viable business model. Esp in competition with free (but not actually) mass scale Twitter, FB, etc.

I think you'd have to offer something entirely different that is not in "competition" in any way by not being "alike" at all, but still filling some similar needs.

I personally have never enjoyed Twitter or the kind of service it offered, so would never consider paying for anything which looked like it really. Though I guess I do donate to the Mastodon instance I have an account on, but that's more of a philosophical thing than anything to do with subscribing to a service. I barely use it.

"you will pay to be the product"

Sounds like Musk got inflationpilled.

Not really. It is laughable to think $1/year is paying for this service. If it is paying for anything, it is to reduce the number of bots and spammers on the network.

So no, it's not having it both ways. Paying a meaningful monthly fee would be.