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Comment by fleddr | Hacker News Reader

I will join you in your unpopular opinion. People have become so entitled that they can't appreciate the value they have in their hands today.

Services like Twitter, Insta, FB, the like are in many ways incredible. We've forgotten all about that, but let's explore...

They're pretty much always available. They scale endlessly without you noticing. They are fast. They have apps on every touch point. They preserve your content pretty much forever, and this content exponentially grows. They have armies of people as well as advanced AI to filter out the most horrible of human depravities, so that you don't get to see it.

And for all of this, you don't pay a single penny. Yes, you'll get a few ads. You can even block those. An incredible amount of value offered, for near-zero costs.

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They also have obvious downsides, so I don't think there's any harm in attempting to create alternatives.

They do, but that's kind of my point. Libraries full of articles have been written about the negative aspects of these services. Many perfectly accurate, no disagreement here.

But think about it. We have networks in which we can connect to any other connected human being. Post near-unlimited amounts of content which is reliably preserved. We have well functioning-apps and reliable services, and relatively clean content. For the price of: 0$, and ads.

What I'm getting at is that all this stuff that we take for granted, isn't a given or free when you scale Mastodon. It costs real money to run instances which hampers growth and sustainability. There's a steep human costs to moderation.

Ah, yeah I see what you're saying. Twitter may not be the best example though. Users don't pay anything, but they've also failed to turn a profit.

All those systems were built and designed during a time where free money via cheap credit was available to fund growth at all costs to become the dominant market player. That money is fading with the Fed rate increases and is looking like it may stay that way for a long time. What this means for tech is more paid everything. Expect most of the free services to disappear. Twitter, Elon or not was going to have to make major cuts to stay afloat.

> And for all of this, you don't pay a single penny. Yes, you'll get a few ads. You can even block those. An incredible amount of value offered, for near-zero costs.

Interesting how you think that the only costs could be financial.

Also, the presence of ads is only tangentially related to impact on privacy (yes, another huge cost).

That's one way of looking at it, too much like explaining the wonder of efficiency that is the gasoline supply chain without mentioning CO2 though. Kinda changes the 'incredible amount of value offered' for me.

Terrible take, sacrificing integrity for uptime.

Well, this is obviously become I'm a terrible person lacking integrity.

Your words.

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