[tcmart14]

And the worst part. I think there are a lot of us who would be willing to pay for being on a good social network without ads, but I don't think there is enough of us. Too many people have been trained via myspace, facebook and twitter that social media is just "free." It it is going to be hard to change the masses on that.

[hnfong]

As long as somebody has friends who can't afford say $10 per month for social media, the network effect takes over and the result will inevitably be ad-ridden crap.

I might be willing to pay to turn off ads and tracking on such a platform, but if all the middle-class+ people pay to turn off ads, which advertisers would want to spend money targeting "poor" people and people too cheap to pay a couple dollars for using social media?