[mullingitover]

I know we're so defeated as consumers that we can hardly imagine it, but you could just...charge for the customers' access to social media network. Kinda like every other service that charges money.

It would have the side effect of making the whole business less ghoulish and manipulative, since the operators wouldn't be incentivized to maximize eyeball hours.

It's impossible to imagine this because government regulation is so completely corrupted that a decades-long anticompetitive dumping scheme is allowed to occur without the slightest pushback.

[zeroonetwothree]

Unlike most business, social media relies on having a high market saturation to provide value. So having a subscription model doesn’t work very well.

Of course perhaps it’s a bit different now since most people consume content from a small set of sources, making social media largely the same as traditional media. But then traditional media also has trouble with being supported by subscriptions.

[musictubes]

App.net was a wonderful experience with great developer buy in. It is also my understanding that it was operating at break even when it was mothballed. The VC backing it wanted Facebook returns. It was an amazing experience because it didn’t depend on advertisers. I have no idea how it would have fared through Covid and election dramas but it remains my platonic ideal for a social network.

[jeromegv]

It's basically Mastodon. The infrastructure is paid by its owner and often relies on donations from their users.

[zeroonetwothree]

Is Mastodon a business?

[dylan604]

Seems like Mastadon is just the Kitchen Aid of socials. Anyone can have their product(s), but not everyone can use them the same way. Those that use them better stand out from the rest to the point others might just stop using and the product just takes up space

[christina97]

I hate the ad business model as much as the next person, but this is a pipe dream. Meta had ~$50b in revenue on ads last quarter, and 3.54b “daily active people” whatever that means. That’s in the order of $1/“dap”/week, and there is just absolutely no way any meaningful proportion of their userbase would be paying that much for these apps.

[layla5alive]

$4/mo isn't crazy in many places, though it is in others.

The bigger problem is the monopoly. They would charge $4/mo. Then add ads on top. Then up it to $5/mo. Then..