this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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If I had to pay to use a social media service, it would have to be something I found utterly necessary. I'm not a fan of the trend toward everything being a subscription, so if any service unexpectedly changes to a subscription based service, I'm far more likely to experiment with cutting it out of my life and routine to see if I really needed it to begin with. So far out of the hundreds of subscription service I've had over the last 15 years, I've resubscribed to only 10 or so, and out of those only 3 where because I genuinely valued the service enough to pay for it, rather then because I had gotten an offer for 3 months free, then terminated the account before I was charged for anything. Why pay a provider to use my data for profit and show me ads I have no interest in or desire to see? If I wanted commercials I would watch cable, instead of using a streaming service I explicit choose for not showing constant ads.
I would treat Lemmy the same way. If I had to pay, I wouldn't play. There are other options for my time, simple as that.
What about the time of the people developing the software and the things that you want to use? Software doesn't grow on trees.
Yeah, plenty of things have become subscriptions because some asshole MBA decided that it is better to try to continue milk consumers instead of offering a quality product once. But on the other hand, there are plenty of services that have an ongoing operational cost and can not be priced fairly if we just charge it once. If it is fair to pay our phone lines or water bill for their monthly cost, why wouldn't it be fair to pay for a digital service that costs every month to host your data, keep it secure and up-to-date?
Before Musk took over, Twitter was profitable. So you know you can make a profit without asking for subscription, and while being honest with ads (they were labeled and vetted properly).
Twitter made a small profit in 2018 and 2019. They lost money in every other year.
In fact the year before Musk started ranting about buying it, they reported their biggest loss ever.
The company was a disaster before and after Musk.