Speaking as someone who has been stubbornly offering paid-for-access Mastodon/Lemmy/Matrix (and now Funkwhale) accounts at communick.com for 5+ years, I learned already that very few individuals are willing to put their money where their mouth is. Everyone loves to complain about the exploits of the tech companies, but no one really cares about paying for a service unless it gives some sense of exclusivity.
What is going to make or break the alternative social media networks is the institutions. If/When newspapers (not journalists) start setting up their own instances, if companies put up support accounts on their own domain, if influencers start mirroring their social accounts on their own sites to try to their push their own brand... then I'll start believing that we have a chance.
It's difficult, we compare two different views, one from tech-perspective, and one from user-perspective.
I understand your arguments about the technology, they are absolutely correct, but they attract a typology of niche users, which are extremely demanding and very difficult to convert to paying users.
Twitter, the platform is very glitchy, the owners are who they are, the developer access is horrible, but still, I am using it, because there is exclusive and fresh content.
Bluesky is an interesting project, but I can strongly suggest leaning toward content/user-focus than pure-tech, in order to secure a stronger business-model (and eventually, as a consequence, a sustainable + open ecosystem).
Focus on onboarding great content first, and then walk back to the tech, not the other way around.
For example, to support more extensively those newspapers or institutions to onboard the platform, and most of all, all these unofficial content creators.
There are also some things which feel very strange, like the main description of Bluesky when you search for it on Google: "Simple HTML interfaces are possible, but that is not what this is".
This sounds interesting to me, but visiting communick.com I can't figure out how much the service costs, nor see any way to find out. I see a sign up page, but it also has no pricing info.
Yeah, I am in the process of simplifying the offering and split down the site for managed hosting and the "standard" service. https://communick.com/packages/access should you give a link to the package: $29/year for Mastodon/Matrix/Lemmy/Funkwhale.
What is going to make or break the alternative social media networks is the institutions. If/When newspapers (not journalists) start setting up their own instances, if companies put up support accounts on their own domain, if influencers start mirroring their social accounts on their own sites to try to their push their own brand... then I'll start believing that we have a chance.