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> Why aren't there non-profit (or benefit corporation) versions of these services? From a quick search, it seems that the operating costs for Meta in 2022 was

> Why aren't there non-profit (or benefit corporation) versions of these services? From a quick search, it seems that the operating costs for Meta in 2022 was USD $87.66 billion. Twitter was $5.6 billion in 2021. Reddit's is a mystery but it has 192 million more monthly active users than Twitter (not that they necessarily post the same amount of content or that the content is as expensive to store/serve, but in any case it's not going to be cheap either.) So to run something like Facebook, you'd have to have one of the best-funded non-profits ever. Non-profit doesn't mean it has to be a charitable foundation (so you could run ads and sell services, which you'll need to, because you're not getting $87.66 billion through donations), but even non-profit companies with a decent amount of revenue do not come close to that amount. I don't think it's impossible to create an ethical, non-profit alternative to Facebook, but I understand why one hasn't been created (there are non-profit social networks, but most seem to be distributed/federated social networks, which are a very different experience for most users.) Even if you created something with perfect feature-parity of Facebook, it'd still be extremely difficult to convince users to switch. For messaging platforms, there is a non-profit organization that has a secure and private messaging app (Signal) but few people use it compared to Facebook Messenger, Telegram and KakaoTalk (which by default don't use end-to-end encryption) or even Snapchat (doesn't use E2EE for messages aside from photos) (WhatsApp at least always uses E2EE, not sure about Line.) > Enshitification requires the profit motive. Not really. Firefox killed support for WPAs: that alone is enough reason for some to switch to a Chromium-based browser. They've done several questionable UI redesigns that their users don't seem to like (people like a consistent UI.) They're also starting a bad trend of adding new features that they're killing within a year or two (their password manager, their E2EE file sharing service, their encrypted notes.) I personally didn't use any of those features, but for any user who used those new features that they promoted, having to switch a year or two later is a good way to turn them off your products. Google is obviously far worse with this with their various services, but the point is that quality can decrease even when their is no profit motive. I'll agree with you that it's certainly more likely to happy when there's a profit motive though.

wintermutestwin 3y ago
>operating costs for Meta in 2022 was USD $87.66 billion How much of that actual cost is related to running a simple social blogging/connecting tool vs anything that is ad/surveillance/manipulation/etc? Also, how much are they paying to moderate? Imagine the power of volunteer moderation when supported by a non-profit volunteer-focused organization that values its volunteer assets... >perfect feature-parity of Facebook All I wanted was a place to share baby pictures with grandma and they bolted on the panopticon... >it'd still be extremely difficult to convince users to switch. Even grandma knows that FB is evil now. She keeps asking me why the baby pics are on Facecrook, but I don't have any good solution for her today.
- johnfernow 3y ago
  > How much of that actual cost is related to running a simple social blogging/connecting tool vs anything that is ad/surveillance/manipulation/etc? It's plausible that the ad/surveillance/manipulation/etc makes up the bulk of development costs nowadays but I'd imagine the actual content (photos, videos, etc.) being served makes up the bulk of the costs. It undoubtedly could be made more efficient, but even if you could cut total operating costs by 99% (very unlikely) you still need $876 million/year. If you can only manage to cut it by 95%, you'll need over $4 billion/year. In any case, Reddit doesn't pay most of its moderators and it's still not profitable, so I don't think moderators make up a significant portion of the costs. > >perfect feature-parity of Facebook > All I wanted was a place to share baby pictures with grandma and they bolted on the panopticon... > Even grandma knows that FB is evil now. She keeps asking me why the baby pics are on Facecrook, but I don't have any good solution for her today. If you only want to share things with a small number of users, do you even need social media for this? Sounds like something a group chat on Signal or WhatsApp (with notifications silenced) would work for this if everyone you know is willing to use it. I like Facebook because it lets me see what my friends, family and former coworkers that I can't always see often are up to. Hard to stay in contact with everyone you've ever been friends with, but Facebook makes it a little easier. I agree with you that Facebook is evil in many ways, and I'll 100% advocate for viable alternatives (which unfortunately I don't think distributed/federated networks are, due to regular users being confused by them), but I acknowledge that it's going to be very difficult to get people to switch. Ultimately I think there needs to be a reason to switch other than privacy (as most people don't care), and unfortunately Facebook can quickly copy any unique feature that an alternative network adds. It's not impossible for new platforms to come about, but most new platforms aren't really clones of old ones (TikTok isn't a clone of Facebook, YouTube or really any other major existing platform.) I don't know what the solution is. Not sure how much of an improvement it is for privacy, but in terms of mental wellbeing, I find Discord to be more enjoyable and less addictive, but again, it's not really the same thing as Facebook.
philote 3y ago
I think a better comparison would be the operating costs of Wikipedia/Wikimedia [0] I think non-profit versions of social media can easily happen from a financial standpoint. The big issue would be adoption. [0]: https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2022-annual-report/financials/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2022-annu...

wintermutestwin 3y ago

>operating costs for Meta in 2022 was USD $87.66 billion How much of that actual cost is related to running a simple social blogging/connecting tool vs anything that is ad/surveillance/manipulation/etc? Also, how much are they paying to moderate? Imagine the power of volunteer moderation when supported by a non-profit volunteer-focused organization that values its volunteer assets... >perfect feature-parity of Facebook All I wanted was a place to share baby pictures with grandma and they bolted on the panopticon... >it'd still be extremely difficult to convince users to switch. Even grandma knows that FB is evil now. She keeps asking me why the baby pics are on Facecrook, but I don't have any good solution for her today.

johnfernow 3y ago
> How much of that actual cost is related to running a simple social blogging/connecting tool vs anything that is ad/surveillance/manipulation/etc? It's plausible that the ad/surveillance/manipulation/etc makes up the bulk of development costs nowadays but I'd imagine the actual content (photos, videos, etc.) being served makes up the bulk of the costs. It undoubtedly could be made more efficient, but even if you could cut total operating costs by 99% (very unlikely) you still need $876 million/year. If you can only manage to cut it by 95%, you'll need over $4 billion/year. In any case, Reddit doesn't pay most of its moderators and it's still not profitable, so I don't think moderators make up a significant portion of the costs. > >perfect feature-parity of Facebook > All I wanted was a place to share baby pictures with grandma and they bolted on the panopticon... > Even grandma knows that FB is evil now. She keeps asking me why the baby pics are on Facecrook, but I don't have any good solution for her today. If you only want to share things with a small number of users, do you even need social media for this? Sounds like something a group chat on Signal or WhatsApp (with notifications silenced) would work for this if everyone you know is willing to use it. I like Facebook because it lets me see what my friends, family and former coworkers that I can't always see often are up to. Hard to stay in contact with everyone you've ever been friends with, but Facebook makes it a little easier. I agree with you that Facebook is evil in many ways, and I'll 100% advocate for viable alternatives (which unfortunately I don't think distributed/federated networks are, due to regular users being confused by them), but I acknowledge that it's going to be very difficult to get people to switch. Ultimately I think there needs to be a reason to switch other than privacy (as most people don't care), and unfortunately Facebook can quickly copy any unique feature that an alternative network adds. It's not impossible for new platforms to come about, but most new platforms aren't really clones of old ones (TikTok isn't a clone of Facebook, YouTube or really any other major existing platform.) I don't know what the solution is. Not sure how much of an improvement it is for privacy, but in terms of mental wellbeing, I find Discord to be more enjoyable and less addictive, but again, it's not really the same thing as Facebook.

philote 3y ago

I think a better comparison would be the operating costs of Wikipedia/Wikimedia [0] I think non-profit versions of social media can easily happen from a financial standpoint. The big issue would be adoption. [0]: https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2022-annual-report/financials/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2022-annu...