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Musk isn't exactly popular nowadays, so it is risky to say anything that looks like condoning him, but if I abstract away from his person, the idea isn't wrong
by inglor_cz 3y ago
Musk isn't exactly popular nowadays, so it is risky to say anything that looks like condoning him, but if I abstract away from his person, the idea isn't wrong and I wish it would succeed.
Our current standard of service "everything in tech should be free and paid for by ads" is pathological on so many levels.
First, it turns us users from customers into product, and the corporations are free to ignore our grievances or to deny us actual support.
Second, while programs scale well and you can service the whole humanity with a few server rooms, this isn't true about the non-tech part, e.g. moderation, just enforcement of policies etc. These are human-heavy and expensive, and their cost cannot possibly be borne out of ad revenue alone.
Third, by relying on ads for money, the networks have a huge incentive to develop intentionally addictive products. The more time you spend on the network, the more ads you see, ergo the more valuable you are for the business. We ended up with virtual equivalent of the opiate crisis, the algorithms do their darndest best to polarize us and keep us online.
That said, people after 25 years of free services would probably rather run than accept payment, and Musk as the face of this change does not inspire many either.
- rchaud 3y agoSomethingAwful forums had a $10 signup fee 20 years ago, so this wouldn't be a groundbreaking development. As it is, there are private paid Discord channels aplenty. Musk is talking about paywalls to deter bots, that's it. You've appended positive externalities to this, but I haven't heard him say anything about not monetizing the "user as product" business model. It's been nearly a year after the paid tiers were set up. Realistically do you think New Twitter is going to last long enough to set the example you're hoping for?
- inglor_cz 3y ago"Realistically do you think New Twitter is going to last long enough to set the example you're hoping for?" I am afraid not. We are stuck in a thoroughly entshittified equilibrium. Everyone expects such services to be free and suck.
- 0xAFFFF 3y agoTo be fair, and I'm not saying it lightly because I despise Elon Musk, his rationale for pushing Twitter Blue in the first place was to reduce reliance on advertising revenue, so it's definitely a thing in his mind, even if it's not the main driver for a paywall.
- yomlica8 3y agoAds suck but paying won't make them go away. They are now spreading like a cancer and being forced into products that people were already happily paying for before because the search for additional revenue is unstoppable from publicly traded companies. At best paying will reduce the number of ads you see while making your data more valuable for advertising and tracking purposes by proving you have money and verifying your identity, resulting in you being targeted as a valuable mark. Companies will still be able to pay to be verified and create astroturfing posts and outright ads on the platform and now they will know where to focus their efforts because you will have a target painted on your back and your location is for sale.