I don’t think people are any less willing to pay for social media than they are for their phone and it’s time we recognized that. The largest player in social

I don’t think people are any less willing to pay for social media than they are for their phone and it’s time we recognized that. The largest player in social wants to normalize free service and lock-in: this way its users can come but can hardly leave, competition is impossible since no one can undercut it on price, and its leverage with the advertiser approaches infinity. Now, the moment big social is legally obligated to enable feature-complete third-party clients to exist so that users can easily switch social service providers, a company will pop up and say “we don’t make money from advertising; we’re very transparent about all our records; we provide a full API so you can keep using your favourite client app; our subscription starts at $X”. You can count that this new provider will tear out a chunk of WhatsApp’s user base. The next day yet another provider pops up and advertises cheaper subscriptions at $X/2, further eating away at Facebook’s advertising power. FB understands that the earlier it revamps its business model, the more revenue it can generate from actually paying users; so it revises the ToS, adds paid tiers to its services and becomes very good at upselling them.