this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2024
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Had Twitter added a paid tier early on as it scaled up - when it was still largely the only short form blogging platform - we could potentially have avoided...so much shit we now live in. Twitter was never profitable, so it just kept adding ads until that wasn't sustainable. And then dipshit bought it and really turned it into the nazi place.
Twitter always had problems, but I think we can generally agree it wasn't a pretty good service for lots of things. Breaking news, sports, even science, etc. It had actual (not amazing, but existing) moderation. There's maybe a world out there where a Twitter that isn't owned by some idiot doesn't help influence an election that we now have to deal with for decades to come.
That's all wishful thinking, of course, and Twitter is not THE REASON the U.S. is trash. But there was a path where Twitter didn't turn into just Truth Social 2.0.
Adding a paid tier to Bluesky might sound like "enshitification," but if it simply keeps the company afloat then there's potentially less chance of it becoming Twitter 2.0, so to speak. Otherwise, there's probably a straight path to ads then creditors calling in debts then selling then elon just buys it, too.
Paying for a product does not prevent enshitification.
If by "enshitification" you mean things like invasive ads, invasions of privacy, etc, then the idea is absolutely that making money through a paid tier can stave off the company having to resort to those means.
Okay, so Bluesky started the same way, with no plan to monetize from the get-go, waiting to monetize later. So far, they've not been profitable yet, either. They keep taking money but until seemingly just now have not articulated a plan on how to pay any of it back. That's exactly like Twitter, honestly.
I think the bigger issue is who they took money from and the kind of investment returns they expect. Because if this model doesn't pan out enough for their greedy little hearts, they'll demand ads and worse, too.
Because of capitalism's never-ending desire for more, I expect to see both subscriptions and ads.
Well done everyone, you jumped ship from one pile of shit over to something that isn't quite a pile of shit yet
The timelines are vastly different here. Twitter had like 15 years to figure it out.