I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that there’s a slight problem with saying “social networks shouldn’t become paid because some users will leave”.
This line of reasoning implicitly treats those products as some sort of public good. I imagine it’s beneficial to their owners—but is it to the users?
There’s a conflict of interest here. Networks want to be free. Huge account numbers and de-facto public good status positively influence network valuations and allow them to charge more for ads; armies of troll and no-value accounts greatly inflate the numbers; the loser turns out to be legitimate users. If we are sure they remain afloat if we pay them, why should we worry about product’s popularity more than our own treatment?
They are not central parks or public squares. They don’t have the obligation of being free. They are free to discriminate subscription prices between countries, which many companies do today (Apple Music is 5 times cheaper in India than in the US[0]).
And if geographical price discrimination is not enough, if I’m poor I have the freedom to use another social network that charges less or nothing; when I (hopefully) grow my income and get fed up with myself being a product of X I can choose to invest into a more expensive tier of social networking and move my social presence[1] to Y—what’s wrong with that?
I suspect that normalizing paid options could make social networking more heterogenous, encourage competition, and likely benefit the society in the long run.
> I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that there’s a slight problem with saying “social networks shouldn’t become paid because some users will leave”.
Facebook was successful because 'everyone' was on Facebook. It was the one place that I would go and find almost everyone I knew, and if I posted something there, all of them would have access to it.
Similarly, I've tried migrating from Twitter to Mastodon. But no one I know uses it, so why bother?
I would pay for Facebook/Twitter, but on the condition that other people are also paying. As soon as people start leaving, there's no much point.
> Facebook was successful because 'everyone' was on Facebook.
I am not convinced that Facebook became successful because it was open to everyone. Arguably, FB owes its success precisely to its exclusive status in the early days, and to rising prevalence of affordable devices in the world. It’s difficult to know whether it was successful because it became open, or it happened independently. However, I agree that social networks played a significant role in recent past. (I think that could be fading away, though.)
> Similarly, I've tried migrating from Twitter to Mastodon. But no one I know uses it, so why bother?
> I would pay for Facebook/Twitter, but on the condition that other people are also paying. As soon as people start leaving, there's no much point.
I don’t think it’s worth treating FB/Twitter/Mastodon as some sort of window to the whole of humanity. There are interesting people who do not engage or have no presence on Twitter or Facebook.
Competition is tough when the biggest players radically undercut on price by being free thanks to investor and ad money, riding on network effects of the past. However, users are waking up that by engaging on a free ad-supported service they become the product. The way it’s going, more and more people are using ad-supported free platforms to self-promote, campaign, spread different kinds of evangelism, and/or link to profiles to elsewhere online where higher level of engagement is possible. Where they link to is where new social networks have an opportunity.
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I think plurality of social networks and a single network for everyone both have their problems.
A plurality of networks presents a challenge in that it’s difficult for one person to engage on many disparate platforms (consumes time and effort), but this can be addressed: for example, with paid networks that don’t need to show ads and can thus offer complete APIs, we just might see fully featured multi-network GUI clients bridging them together.
Having a single network where everyone participates, on the other hand, seems unrealistic—even in a single country. This, I think, can not be addressed at all (except by having a government maintain its own censored avenue for discussion, which is only really compatible with a very authoritarian regime).
This line of reasoning implicitly treats those products as some sort of public good. I imagine it’s beneficial to their owners—but is it to the users?
There’s a conflict of interest here. Networks want to be free. Huge account numbers and de-facto public good status positively influence network valuations and allow them to charge more for ads; armies of troll and no-value accounts greatly inflate the numbers; the loser turns out to be legitimate users. If we are sure they remain afloat if we pay them, why should we worry about product’s popularity more than our own treatment?
They are not central parks or public squares. They don’t have the obligation of being free. They are free to discriminate subscription prices between countries, which many companies do today (Apple Music is 5 times cheaper in India than in the US[0]).
And if geographical price discrimination is not enough, if I’m poor I have the freedom to use another social network that charges less or nothing; when I (hopefully) grow my income and get fed up with myself being a product of X I can choose to invest into a more expensive tier of social networking and move my social presence[1] to Y—what’s wrong with that?
I suspect that normalizing paid options could make social networking more heterogenous, encourage competition, and likely benefit the society in the long run.
[0] https://www.cashnetusa.com/blog/which-countries-pay-most-and...
[1] If https://datatransferproject.dev pans out, I could perhaps even take my posts with me.