this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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Genuine concern,
How did people think stuff like this would be funded?
I’m pretty anti corporation and capitalism, and pro open-source but this just sounds like regular inflammatory content.
There seems to be a disconnect on the internet that everything should be completely free, ignoring all the costs that go into setting up websites and web applications.
The money for it has to come from somewhere. If you want to protect your privacy (which you should) then you’d be better off paying for services like that than not. It’s been circlejerked to death but: If it’s free, you’re the product.
Even Lemmy is not immune. Sure it’s FOSS, but it’s not free to host. Someone has to pay for servers, data, web domains and more.
No matter what you do, if you want access to social media you’re going to have to shell out some cash, somewhere.
Edit: I might get the eventual “oh they’re going to make you pay AND still sell your data so why should you pay?” You don’t. You put your money elsewhere if you were even considering paying. Invest in Lemmy and the Fediverse. Invest in your local server. There’s plenty more options.
Exactly. I'd honestly rather have paid social media than engagement algo and ad-driven social media. When your algorithms chase engagement over all else, it leads to real harms, like the youtube alt-right pipeline. Fediverse ain't perfect, but I like that there's no engagement-chasing algorithm, no ads, just donations.
Here's the thing though. You realize that they're not going to stop with this right?
It's going to be paid, they're still going to track you, they are going to offer tiers of service and the higher tier you belong to the more serotonin and dopamine you get out of participating on the platform.
You're still going to be seeing ads, maybe not at first, you know to get you into the system but once you're locked in they're going to start showing you ads again or they're going to charge you much much more money.
I am well aware that at a certain level all of the computer hardware and compute time and electricity and network costs a significant amount of money.
But the amount of money they are charging people will never be enough. They could get $1,000 a month from every human being on the planet and they would still want more money because it's not about providing a service it's about making money and there is no amount of money that is enough money, and the only thing stopping these companies from stooping lower and lower in the pursuit of more money is the fact that they have to court the people that have the money to get the money.
In my edit I explicitly stated that it should be paid out elsewhere if you planned to invest any money at all into social media.
I’m not justifying their practices because they’re basically quadruple dipping now, but I am pointing out the hypocrisy in being appalled at paying for social media