I do wish we could just pay modest fees for membership in sites like Facebook. But I doubt they'd be willing to try that approach... or that we'd be willing to

I do wish we could just pay modest fees for membership in sites like Facebook. But I doubt they'd be willing to try that approach... or that we'd be willing to support it (even for useful services that haven't burned their ethical reputation like Facebook has.) As a society, we really need to learn that our expectation of free services tends to create inferior services, many of which eventually succumb to perverse incentives. On a related note, it was discouraging when Facebook used to say, "It's free, and always will be!" on it's login page. I read that statement as a threat.