My main point is that "Free" is a strong force to reckon with, in the face of a monthly subscription fee. Of course, Mastodon isn't actually free, but it's the

My main point is that "Free" is a strong force to reckon with, in the face of a monthly subscription fee. Of course, Mastodon isn't actually free, but it's the sort of situation like IRC, where only one ops guy willing to spend a little bit can host the space for everyone. At least, this is the logic I and the rest of my Twitter circle (which is fairly large! I've met probably 50-100 people irl through Twitter, got my job through Twitter, have two accounts with follower counts in the thousands, etc) would likely use if planning to jump ship. People who treat Twitter as a pure feed rather than as a social space might be willing to pay, but part of what makes Twitter such a great news source is that _anyone_ can post current happenings, and how many of those _anyones_ with small accounts will be willing to pay just to use the platform once every week or two? Of course, Twitter could get around all this by having paid accounts for power users only, but then many of the most important and largest accounts would jump ship and devalue the platform for everyone else, leaving only paid marketing accounts that cater to fans and brands. Not a great situation. Point being, it's a hard problem, for Twitter to monetize without losing the thing that makes it a great platform, and my guess is charging all users a flat subscription fee ain't gonna cut it, and would produce an exodus to the next-most-similar platform, i.e. Mastodon.