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Comment by Bjorkbat | Hacker News Reader

This actually makes me pretty sad. For all of Facebook's ills, it did at least do a good job of keeping me connected with friends before it got weird. Same with Instagram. Twitter is fantastic because it helps me discover new people, new interests, new worlds, in a way.

TikTok doesn't feel social at all. It feels entirely too performative. Everything on there is a performance. Everything is an act. Everything is simply an effort of some kind or another. Sounds more exhausting than fun.

Really wish there was a thriving ecosystem of small online communities that had some sort of financial structure that could collectively create as much money as these larger companies do.

Instead, well, here we are.

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Facebook was indeed very innovative, I loved it and I was fascinated by the things it made possible up until 10 years ago. I also made my first money by creating apps and selling them back in 2008.

I guess it's always more fun when the VCs pay for all that and all the fun evaporates when they want their money back.

I've been working on an app https://aurdia.com/creators/ to create an ecosystem of communities that provides multiple ways outside of advertisements for the community admins to get paid from the support of their members. I think there needs to be a movement away from people's data being sold as the product from these services to really improve the quality of what we experience on the web.

I presume this is a hobby / solo effort?

Unfortunately there are grammar errors throughout this page.

E.g. the heading "Your communities place to connect" should be "Your community's place to connect".

In fact, reading through more of it, it comes across as if English is not your first language? It would be worth it to find someone to copy-edit all your content.

Thanks for taking the time to read over it and providing that feedback.

Admittedly I'm not the most well versed in copy-writing and will do as you suggested to get someone who is to read over it in detail.

How did you find the overall structure and contents of the page? Did you find it was clear at conveying the messaging?

Cheers.

> TikTok doesn't feel social at all

I agree entirely but I'd argue that this is a feature rather than a flaw. It's more like community TV than a place for dialog with social connections.

> It feels entirely too performative.

I think this depends greatly on the niches of TikTok that you have led yourself to. Some is definitely very performative and it can feel like you're on the receiving end of an endless stream of pitches for your attention. But other parts are far more laid-back. SynthTok, for example, is mostly just context-free synthesizer jams.

What does the research show as to why people won't pay a subscription or entertain another type of monetization model?

If you look at platforms like Twitch, Substack, and Patreon, I think it's pretty clear people are willing to entertain other models in large enough volume to support the livelihoods of the recipients. I do find it curious why there isn't a "paid" option from services like Facebook where you pay a monthly fee to essentially opt out of being their product opposed to user and not get targeted with ads. I guess in their case the monetization prospects from the hyper targeting they are able to do is probably too lucrative to even give people the option to opt out of.

Part of the basic issue with that kind of "opt out" system is that the users who will pay for no ads probably have more disposable income and are therefore desirable advertising targets.

I believe I've heard it said that Hulu makes _more_ money per user on "with-ads" tier users than those that pay extra to remove the ads.

Seems to be working for YouTube, although their subscription is probably on the high end cost wise.

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