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You can donate to Signal too. What has to happen until people realize they should be willing to pay a little money for a service? We've actually witnessed that

You can donate to Signal too. What has to happen until people realize they should be willing to pay a little money for a service? We've actually witnessed that people _are_ willing to pay for streaming services like Spotify and Netflix after a long time of illegal torrents. How can we spread this sentiment towards services like email and chat too?

ubercow13 6y ago
People were willing to pay for WhatsApp. It was exactly that simple, honest, high quality independent paid chat app you are alluding to, back in 2010 or so.
- deleted 6y ago
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- the_gipsy 6y ago
  Iirc, it was 1€, and maybe it was even only on iOS. I remember vaguely getting convinced by a friend, "you just payed [200,300,idk]€ for that new phone, can't pay one euro for this one app?"
franga2000 6y ago
> How can we spread this sentiment towards services like email and chat too? We can't, because those two things are in direct opposition. Piracy was less convenient and offered fewer features that people wanted, so they moved to platforms that were more convenient. The current giants (Gmail, Facebook, WhatsApp...) are more convenient than their alternatives (generic email, Mastodon, Signal...) and so the pressure is not to move, but in fact to stay. In general, the pressure is always decentralised->centralised, which is exactly what torrents->Netflix was. Even if we had infinite funds to offer people distributed services for free forever, we would still need to make them more convenient than their current centralised ones - if on top of not being more convenient, we also want to charge them, I see no reason why the average person would ever want to switch.
nkingsy 6y ago
Paid still needs to answer to shareholders
e_y_ 6y ago
I think part of the problem is the network effect. Social networks want to maximize the number of users so that anyone can connect to you on Facebook, Twitter, etc. The lowest barrier to entry is free, and that usually means ad supported (and personalized ads for the most revenue). Maybe there's some space for a freemium model (IIRC one of the questions asked during the Facebook hearing was whether they could add a paid ad-free option) but so far that hasn't happened.

ubercow13 6y ago

People were willing to pay for WhatsApp. It was exactly that simple, honest, high quality independent paid chat app you are alluding to, back in 2010 or so.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
the_gipsy 6y ago
Iirc, it was 1€, and maybe it was even only on iOS. I remember vaguely getting convinced by a friend, "you just payed [200,300,idk]€ for that new phone, can't pay one euro for this one app?"

franga2000 6y ago

> How can we spread this sentiment towards services like email and chat too? We can't, because those two things are in direct opposition. Piracy was less convenient and offered fewer features that people wanted, so they moved to platforms that were more convenient. The current giants (Gmail, Facebook, WhatsApp...) are more convenient than their alternatives (generic email, Mastodon, Signal...) and so the pressure is not to move, but in fact to stay. In general, the pressure is always decentralised->centralised, which is exactly what torrents->Netflix was. Even if we had infinite funds to offer people distributed services for free forever, we would still need to make them more convenient than their current centralised ones - if on top of not being more convenient, we also want to charge them, I see no reason why the average person would ever want to switch.

nkingsy 6y ago

Paid still needs to answer to shareholders

e_y_ 6y ago

I think part of the problem is the network effect. Social networks want to maximize the number of users so that anyone can connect to you on Facebook, Twitter, etc. The lowest barrier to entry is free, and that usually means ad supported (and personalized ads for the most revenue). Maybe there's some space for a freemium model (IIRC one of the questions asked during the Facebook hearing was whether they could add a paid ad-free option) but so far that hasn't happened.