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"some" people are happy to do that. Some people just don't want to pay for software regardless of anything else.

I have friends who had switched to other messaging apps instead of paying WhatsApp 1€/year or whatever it was, and by any measure I live in a rich country and paying 1€/year for my friends would have been pretty much completely irrelevant economically.

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This is part of the issue. Audience. Mass consumer does not know and/or does not care. If that is the case, the company can easily determine that Zoidberg approach of 'Why not both' is very rational, if annoying to people like me.

We live in a world where you can find almost any computer service for free. Not everyone is like lazy americans willing to take the credit card out at any road bump. They will find a service that does the same for free. I can barely convince my friends with that mindset to come to Telegram when they already majorly use Messenger. Not only do they need an incentive to switch to Telegram, adding a fee to use the platform would simply kill the app. There are many ways to monetize services that don't require users to pay just to join, and this is the way forward even though it's meeting resistance from companies, it will win in the long run. Don't fight it, work with it and learn to take advantage of it instead.

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