[pclmulqdq]

You can also charge people their net present LTV upfront. For most forums, that's something like $10 worth of ads, which is why several popular forums worked well with a one-time $10 "pro" fee. You don't need recurring revenue from people to get their entire LTV, and you don't need an endowment to make that model sustainable. You need to make them pay you in whatever form maximizes your net present value (NPV).

Twitter, Facebook, and Google have used ads to collect revenue from their users in the past. SaaS apps and services today use recurring subscriptions, which is nice because it lets you match up your inflows to your outflows. Old desktop software, which had high recurring costs too, used single payments (although they also charged for updates). Modern desktop software tends to use subscription fees.

Companies need to make their revenue models match what customers expect in order to get payment. That means that you should be selling your SaaS as a subscription or a metered API even if you (hypothetically) do not have recurring costs. It also means that Twitter might have to stay with a $0/month fee and collect its revenue in the form of ads and "direct payments for services."

For Twitter, "influencers" might pay as much as $1000 for a "verified influencer" label on their profile despite that many of them are upset at $20/month, particularly if you make it annoying for them (so they feel that they are actually spending their money on getting "verified" and the verification will be hard to fake). Maybe you can get $100/year as a "renewal fee" on those labels, too. If you offered the rest of us a $50 "not a bot" green checkmark that takes a few custom photos and an ID, you will probably get plenty of those too.

It's all psychology. Fixed fees and recurring fees can have the same NPV. The game is maximizing that NPV.