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I think the problem is more fundamental than this: When your monetization model is tied to usage, then of course you will try to maximize usage, rather than use

I think the problem is more fundamental than this: When your monetization model is tied to usage, then of course you will try to maximize usage, rather than user benefit. It can't be any other way if your reward function is tied to product usage. Contrast with a car: Their monetization model does not depend on how much I drive it - as long as I find it useful enough to buy. Or a gym, where it actually runs in reverse - the gym makes more money when I use the product less, just so long as I don't leave. Microsoft office or Mario Kart do not need me to be addicted - they just need me to buy the software. Even Photoshop with a subscription model doesn't pursue addiction strategies - why would they? Just make it useful enough for me to keep paying for it, and that's plenty good. Maybe it's actually closer to the gym in that sense. Which products are the ones that require addiction?? The ones that are free to use but cost money to provide. IOW - In many ways this is our fault for expecting social media and many other services to be provided to us for free, relying on ads to pay for it. I suppose you could try to make a social media platform without dark patterns and charge a monthly fee for it, but how many people would pay for it? My guess is close enough to zero to ensure failure. But I tell you what - I'd probably pay for it myself. And I'd be very lonely. Edit: Replaced all-caps with italics.

sailfast 1y ago
And yet probably less alone than when using polluted and terrible social media. I would pay, FWIW. I am actively looking for a decent community of humans online that isn’t run by selling data to AI farms or trying to get my eyeballs all the time. Unfortunately social media ate many of the places I previously used to call home.
- Nifty3929 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - _Algernon_ 1y ago
    But even paid business models get polluted with the usage driven metrics over time. Netflix is paid but now has advertisements. They have stated that their main competitor is sleep, which is obviously detrimental to the user. How do we prevent this from happening for such a paid social media?
    - Nifty3929 1y ago
      Netflix introduced an additional billing model to cater to those folks who would prefer ads to a subscription fee, but has not removed the no-ads model for a higher fee. I'm happy to pay for my ad-free Netflix, and I respect that others might want to choose differently. This is not a dark pattern, it's a light/good/gold (?) pattern.
      - _Algernon_ 1y ago
        I disagree. Introducing ads just to then effectively increasing the price of the no-ads plan is scummy, rent-seeking behavior. Ironically the Black Mirror episode from Netflix called Common People is the best dystopic extrapolation of this kind of behavior that I have seen.
  - mch82 1y ago
    Those interested in this branch of the discussion might find Dave Winer’s blog series about building an open social network on top of the RSS standard worth a read. Here’s one of many posts: http://scripting.com/2025/06/28/211301.html http://scripting.com/2025/06/28/211301.html
artlessmax 1y ago
Founder of a social-media-adjacent startup here — 100% agree that monetization model, moreso than funding etc is the core problem. The decisions for which I am most grateful my co-founders and I have made, from day one, were to 1) have a monetization model that's not reliant on usage and 2) not set goals against usage. Granted, we're a bit of a peculiar case because of the market we serve (giving parents a screen-free alternative to smartphones and social media for their kids). But personally, my experience here has given me hope that other monetization models _can_ pave the way for non-addictive social products to flourish.
jjani 1y ago
As long as the founders aren't looking to make billions, it's very possible to run a healthy social media platform, as evidenced by Front Porch Forum [1]. 20 employees, human moderators (gasp)! There's also Metafilter which is paid [2]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/08/10/front-porch-forum-vermont-research-new-public/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/08/10/front-p... [2] https://www.metafilter.com/ https://www.metafilter.com/
- IIsi50MHz 1y ago
  > The current sign-up fee is US$5; it's a one-time fee and is the only cost associated with using the site.[1] That's…surprisingly cheap. Which reminds me that I keep meaning to set up an SDF or tildeverse account. [1] https://www.metafilter.com/faq.mefi#1 https://www.metafilter.com/faq.mefi#1
abdullahkhalids 1y ago
> I suppose you could try to make a social media platform without dark patterns and charge a monthly fee for it, but how many people would pay for it? In 2022, mastodon.social was provisioned at a cost of 0.6EUR/year/user for 191k users [1]. This price is payable even by many people in poor countries. People would pay for something like this same as they pay for other stuff, assuming it was well designed and gave users power to do stuff. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38117385 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38117385
- Gigachad 1y ago
  The server costs would be tiny compared to moderation, legal, and R&D.
  - timeon 1y ago
    Seems like only solution for social media is to make it as open-source, tax-funded public service. No-engagement/gamification, no-ads, no-spyware.
  - abdullahkhalids 1y ago
    0.6 EUR/year/person was the entire cost including moderation and R&D. I don't think any legal costs were incurred. If you built a federated social media where individual instances are responsible for their own moderation, then the software maker doesn't have to incur those costs.
ulrikrasmussen 1y ago
I think you are correct, the root problem is that the targeted advertisement model is far more profitable than any paid model, thus outcompeting every sustainable alternative. I personally think the solution is simple, yet fairly draconian and therefore hard to implement due to the inevitable political backlash: ban all targeted advertising. You can still run ads on digital platforms, but the outcome of the heuristic used to pick an ad must be independent of user derived data, including session data, ip address, time of day, country, past viewing history and so on.
- specproc 1y ago
  Whilst thoroughly supporting the ban hammer on most forms of advertising, I'm pragmatic enough to understand multiple strategies are required. We need to educate friends and family about ads, help them understand the harms, give them tools to avoid them. No one should be browsing the internet without an ad blocker in 2025, certainly no one we love.
- jrowen 1y ago
  This is completely wild to me. I honestly do most of my clothes shopping through Instagram/Facebook ads. I enjoy that targeted advertising shows me new products and companies that I'm interested in, often very niche stuff that I don't come across otherwise. I would so much rather see that than ads for life insurance, penis pills, ambulance chasers, or whatever other bullcrap goes to the lowest common denominator. The ads that get read on podcasts are a great example of this.
  - sapphire42 1y ago
    Worshipping the elite won't make you become one of them...
    - jrowen 1y ago
      Very thoughtful contribution, thank you. I'll just say this: make the algorithm work for you.
  - 1y ago

sailfast 1y ago

And yet probably less alone than when using polluted and terrible social media. I would pay, FWIW. I am actively looking for a decent community of humans online that isn’t run by selling data to AI farms or trying to get my eyeballs all the time. Unfortunately social media ate many of the places I previously used to call home.

Nifty3929 1y ago
[flagged]
- _Algernon_ 1y ago
  But even paid business models get polluted with the usage driven metrics over time. Netflix is paid but now has advertisements. They have stated that their main competitor is sleep, which is obviously detrimental to the user. How do we prevent this from happening for such a paid social media?
  - Nifty3929 1y ago
    Netflix introduced an additional billing model to cater to those folks who would prefer ads to a subscription fee, but has not removed the no-ads model for a higher fee. I'm happy to pay for my ad-free Netflix, and I respect that others might want to choose differently. This is not a dark pattern, it's a light/good/gold (?) pattern.
    - _Algernon_ 1y ago
      I disagree. Introducing ads just to then effectively increasing the price of the no-ads plan is scummy, rent-seeking behavior. Ironically the Black Mirror episode from Netflix called Common People is the best dystopic extrapolation of this kind of behavior that I have seen.
- mch82 1y ago
  Those interested in this branch of the discussion might find Dave Winer’s blog series about building an open social network on top of the RSS standard worth a read. Here’s one of many posts: http://scripting.com/2025/06/28/211301.html http://scripting.com/2025/06/28/211301.html

artlessmax 1y ago

Founder of a social-media-adjacent startup here — 100% agree that monetization model, moreso than funding etc is the core problem. The decisions for which I am most grateful my co-founders and I have made, from day one, were to 1) have a monetization model that's not reliant on usage and 2) not set goals against usage. Granted, we're a bit of a peculiar case because of the market we serve (giving parents a screen-free alternative to smartphones and social media for their kids). But personally, my experience here has given me hope that other monetization models _can_ pave the way for non-addictive social products to flourish.

jjani 1y ago

As long as the founders aren't looking to make billions, it's very possible to run a healthy social media platform, as evidenced by Front Porch Forum [1]. 20 employees, human moderators (gasp)! There's also Metafilter which is paid [2]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/08/10/front-porch-forum-vermont-research-new-public/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/08/10/front-p... [2] https://www.metafilter.com/ https://www.metafilter.com/

IIsi50MHz 1y ago
> The current sign-up fee is US$5; it's a one-time fee and is the only cost associated with using the site.[1] That's…surprisingly cheap. Which reminds me that I keep meaning to set up an SDF or tildeverse account. [1] https://www.metafilter.com/faq.mefi#1 https://www.metafilter.com/faq.mefi#1

abdullahkhalids 1y ago

> I suppose you could try to make a social media platform without dark patterns and charge a monthly fee for it, but how many people would pay for it? In 2022, mastodon.social was provisioned at a cost of 0.6EUR/year/user for 191k users [1]. This price is payable even by many people in poor countries. People would pay for something like this same as they pay for other stuff, assuming it was well designed and gave users power to do stuff. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38117385 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38117385

Gigachad 1y ago
The server costs would be tiny compared to moderation, legal, and R&D.
- timeon 1y ago
  Seems like only solution for social media is to make it as open-source, tax-funded public service. No-engagement/gamification, no-ads, no-spyware.
- abdullahkhalids 1y ago
  0.6 EUR/year/person was the entire cost including moderation and R&D. I don't think any legal costs were incurred. If you built a federated social media where individual instances are responsible for their own moderation, then the software maker doesn't have to incur those costs.

ulrikrasmussen 1y ago

I think you are correct, the root problem is that the targeted advertisement model is far more profitable than any paid model, thus outcompeting every sustainable alternative. I personally think the solution is simple, yet fairly draconian and therefore hard to implement due to the inevitable political backlash: ban all targeted advertising. You can still run ads on digital platforms, but the outcome of the heuristic used to pick an ad must be independent of user derived data, including session data, ip address, time of day, country, past viewing history and so on.

specproc 1y ago
Whilst thoroughly supporting the ban hammer on most forms of advertising, I'm pragmatic enough to understand multiple strategies are required. We need to educate friends and family about ads, help them understand the harms, give them tools to avoid them. No one should be browsing the internet without an ad blocker in 2025, certainly no one we love.
jrowen 1y ago
This is completely wild to me. I honestly do most of my clothes shopping through Instagram/Facebook ads. I enjoy that targeted advertising shows me new products and companies that I'm interested in, often very niche stuff that I don't come across otherwise. I would so much rather see that than ads for life insurance, penis pills, ambulance chasers, or whatever other bullcrap goes to the lowest common denominator. The ads that get read on podcasts are a great example of this.
- sapphire42 1y ago
  Worshipping the elite won't make you become one of them...
  - jrowen 1y ago
    Very thoughtful contribution, thank you. I'll just say this: make the algorithm work for you.
- 1y ago