Social media is changing, and paid accounts are the response | Hacker News Reader

Social media is changing, and paid accounts are the response

bigtechnology.com

47 pointslxm52 comments

> Social media feeds, once filled with content from ordinary users, are now programmed primarily by professional creators.

Honestly, I'm pretty grateful, because it means I finally won't miss anything when I delete my Facebook account. For a long time I wanted to get rid of Facebook because I found it toxic, but I worried about keeping up with old friends and missing out on some of their important life announcements.

These days, though, I so rarely see content from my friends anyway that I'd barely miss it. My FB feed these days is the equivalent of a soda or glazed donut - tons of sugar but no real nutrients. Which I think is kind of sad, because I do think there is still a useful "just your friends" social media app, but basically they've all gotten on the TikTok-ification of just generating more addictive crap that it's unbearable. My favorite is that tons of Reels creators have realized "dwell time" is an important metric, so I'm inundated with tons of "Just wait for it!" or "You won't believe it when you see it!" videos that are like 20 minutes long where nothing happens, but creators set things up with a "where's waldo" tagline to keep you waiting until the end. Of course, you see one or two of those videos and now I basically never open Reels again.

That's what I like about HN – it may not be friends posting, but at least it's people. No such thing as a professional HN commenter ... at least not that I've noticed.

> No such thing as a professional HN commenter

https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders

I haven't used Facebook the way it was meant to be used for maybe a decade; I actually had to create a new Facebook account when my wife and I moved in together because whenever we arranged a large gathering at our house we did it as a Facebook event and I couldn't invite people otherwise.

That said, I scrolled through Facebook a while ago, and it reminded me of flipping aimlessly through channels in the days of cable TV; there wasn't any content there that I would have gone out of my way to look for, but there was a lot that was just interesting enough to stop on for a second. It felt so gross that I haven't opened Facebook since, except to look through Marketplace.

Twitter-wise, moving to Mastodon was a great filter for people. 99% of the people I follow or who follow me didn't make the jump (as far as I can tell), and so the result is a small feed of people who are sufficiently aware of what's going on as to figure out how mastodon works, which seems to be a good signal for 'people worth hearing from'. Likewise the posts that they boost into my feed are also much more relevant than tweets on Twitter tended to be.

"end of free social media" Corporate and government controlled social media has been quite expensive for a long time. Stuff you do not want is forced into your feed. Your every action is tracked and recorded to be distilled into other products. Your views are censored if they do not align with those controlling it. You are locked in without any interoperable exit.

The most free social media is in the fediverse. You can run your own instance for $5-$10 a month and share it with others.

These apps today have as much to do with "social media" as Uber and Lyft have to do with "ride-sharing". It was social when you saw what your friends were posting. Nowadays the only people posting are those that see Facebook/Twitter as an income stream.

> The reactions all missed the underlying shift behind the move: Social media feeds, once filled with content from ordinary users, are now programmed primarily by professional creators. These creators need identity verification, customer service, and visibility boosting. And they’re willing to pay. Meta is simply filling the need.

Ugh, this is the worst thing about social media in my opinion these days. It's why I really, really like RSS feeds of blog posts:

1. Everything is still chronological

2. If someone went to the trouble to post to their blog, they'll put more thought into it than if they were just cussing out their most hated politician on twitter

3. The blogging space is still relatively independent of the content mill.

I do miss my feedly account though, simply because it makes it easier to find these feeds so they don't go stale.

Why should I pay for the privilege of having my data being sold, even as a paid user? Twitter is known to be in cahoots with Acxiom[0] a very shady data broker. And as for Facebook, they have a goldmine from turning people's data into ADs. Why should I give them one cent? Verification can be done without asking for money.

[0] https://www.acxiom.com/news/acxiom-expands-its-global-data-p...

Bingo. We pay for all kinds of products that collect and sell our data, namely TVs, cars, Anything-as-a-Service... This would just be seen as an additional revenue stream

Creators are often businesses, and drive direct revenue from the platform. That's why it makes more sense to charge them first than to charge consumer.

I prefer content from creators putting their stuff out their because it is their passion vs the creators trying to run their accounts like businesses.

Platforms are welcome to select for the latter (and some do), but I'll take my eyeballs elsewhere.

People who create for the joy of creating are the golden goose content that makes platforms fascinating. Malls full of ads just aren't fun. For vast majority of users, sponsored content is something they'd prefer to not consume. For-profit speech is an ugly vacuum of actual culture.

Twitter sorting replies on threads to show people who paid first has already started training me to avoid looking at replies anymore. Capturing value on-platform can be the right move, but its constantly risking UX.

Professionals? I thought this was going to be about paid accounts in order to prevent bots and spam. Especially with the rise of LLMs and it seems like every day the botnets are getting larger and smarter.

I would like to pay a few bucks a month for the opposite of this: a social media where being a professional content creator gets you banned or at least restricted from visibility, in order to encourage new people and original content. There would also be identity verification, and the few dollars (besides supporting the side and allowing it to not run ads) would prevent people from finding ways to DoS or circumvent this unless they spend huge amounts of money.

The site could also distribute some of this money back to "viral" content in an effort to further reward originality and reduce sponsorships. And while the pay would be proportionally better than YouTube and other platforms, nobody is getting rich or making their full income (and you still get flagged for promoting stuff), so it wouldn't defeat the purpose. Just something to encourage people to make content and help kickstart the new platform.

Many people share this desire, which is why real "social networks" have moved to invite-only groups on chat services like Discord, Whatsapp, Slack etc. It turns out they're actually a better way to keep up with the real people you know, without any annoying ads or influencers crowding out the organic content.

No, they absolutely want normal users to pay. They're just struggling to find features people will pay for.

Long before Musk did his blue checkmark nonsense, YouTube was trying to get people to sign up for YouTube Premium.

You'd have to be a really...curious person to waste money on something like this. Then again, I don't play freemium games either so I'm clearly not the type of person who would pay for this.

The people who pay for this are the people who use these platforms for their jobs. And even then, only the big ones. I think the last stats I saw on twitter blue was like 0.2% of account holders. Nearly a rounding error.

How many accounts are active? I'm going to go on Twitter right now while writing this comment and find you a Blue user with less than 100 followers too.

https://twitter.com/RaX369

That looks like a bot account if you ask me. It does not post, and replies only to news articles and elon musk. Plus a comment about Israel Palestine.

Not to mention it has 60K likes and a fake link.

I guess I tried. Unsubstantiated claims will win again because there's no number of profiles I could link to prove nickthegreek wrong.

To prove nickthegreek wrong you would need to show a number meaningfully higher than 0.2% of accounts.

No to prove nickthegreek wrong I'd have to have a list of Twitter Blue users that are not using their subscription to benefit their jobs that is longer than the list of Twitter Blue users that are.

But how would I know that? How would I know which people are benefiting? How do we know they are breaking even?

It's not worth it; I'm giving up.

https://www.google.com/search?q=twitter+blue+0.2

I cannot read the source material without a subscription: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/musks-twitter-has-ju...

Can anyone verify the claim?

The article talks about charging the content creators. I wonder if there is also a market for charging the content consumers where they get Chronological feed or the ability to use custom clients.

> where they get Chronological feed

Are you suggesting they paywall the chronological feed that's been free for 16 years?

> or the ability to use custom clients

It's too late. Twitter killed the custom clients, and the client developers have (angrily) abandoned them. That bridge has been burned entirely. The devs would never be dumb enough to trust Twitter again.

I think we are talking about a chronological unadulterated feed of only those people we follow. An API key could be sold for this to be used in desired client. Or you could just the fediverse where this is standard.

> Are you suggesting they paywall the chronological feed that's been free for 16 years?

Yes. It's not very nice, but there is nothing that'll prevent them from doing this.

> It's too late. Twitter killed the custom clients, and the client developers have (angrily) abandoned them. That bridge has been burned entirely. The devs would never be dumb enough to trust Twitter again.

That's true. But some might come back, for example, if Twitter takes some of the Twitter Blue revenue and, say, give 20 cents per month for each Twitter Blue users that sign in through a list of sanctioned app. Yes, Twitter would have been in a better position if they didn't burn the bridge.

> there is nothing that'll prevent them from doing this

Except user exodus

> if Twitter takes some of the Twitter Blue revenue and, say, give 20 cents per month for each Twitter Blue users that sign in through a list of sanctioned app

"Starting today, Twitter will share ad revenue with creators for ads that appear in their reply threads" "To be eligible, the account must be a subscriber to Twitter Blue Verified" https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1621544497388875777

This was announced a month ago but never actually happened. In effect, a lie. Twitter can't be trusted. https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/3/23623927/twitter-blue-ad-r...

I dunno about you, but the chron feed on FB has been broken for most of the last decade for me. Almost every time I go to it, I'm shown a handful of posts from multiple days ago (even though I just saw there were posts from minutes/hours ago right before switching to chron), and after about a dozen posts it says "this is the end".

> I dunno about you, but the chron feed on FB has been broken for most of the last decade for me.

I was focused on Twitter, admittedly. I never used FB.

Does Twitter let you make the preference permanent now? I recall that it was a temporary preference that reverted to the algorithmic sort after a period of time.

Yes, you can make it permanent now. Twitter has experimented several times with reverting to the algorithm, but each time users have screamed, and Twitter had to backtrack.

One hilarious/dystopian component is that we are paying a company to gather, verify, and sell our data.

Shouldn't this be the other way around? IMO, yes...

Interesting how everyone was calling musk a madman for paid twitter accounts and suddenly its a trend. I think it makes sense too, but sure as hell I am not going to be part of it this time around

Obviously not everyone called him a madman. Personally I found it weird to tie SMS 2FA to paid accounts.

But this hasn't happened, it's the opinion of this person who wrote the article. That doesn't vindicate Musk

When 20% of account holders pay for access, wake me up. It's not a trend until people actually spend money.

I doubt 20% of twitter account holders actively use twitter.

Are 20% of Twitter account holders flesh and blood?

>Interesting how everyone was calling musk a madman for paid twitter accounts and suddenly its a trend.

I think you are taking a very interesting spin on the situation and leaving out many factors; notable blowing up advertising revenue to the tune of several hundred million dollars per year in exchange for a program that is now pulling ~30M/year.

> notable blowing up advertising revenue to the tune of several hundred million dollars per year

Twitter booked ~$4b/year in advertising revenue before Musk.

How would you know what Twitter booked with Musk, now that it is a private company and they don't have to report it, other than rumors and heresay?

Rumors and hearsay aren't worthless when they're published in the Wall St Journal, which has the ability to vet its sources.

I remember, back in the days when slashdot was the sole filler of the role now dominated by Hacker News, people would sarcastically respond to ideas for how to "solve spam" with a long list of things, checking whichever options applied this time.

I wonder how such forms would be filled out these days, in response to ideas like these?

People called musk a madman for paying a huge premium for twitter.

> suddenly its a trend

How many people do you know that are paying for social media? I personally know none.

I personally know no one that owns a Ferrari. Does that mean no one buys a Ferrari?

> Does that mean no one buys a Ferrari?

No. It just means there isn't a trend of people buying ferraris.

You have seen Ferraris on the road, despite not knowing someone who owns one.

There will always be a subgroup of people that will pay for social media, either because their work pays for it or because it is crucial enough for personal reasons.

I am happy to pay for social media if there is zero tracking and zero advertising. However, so far advertising is way too lucrative, so this won't happen.

It feels like it might be one of the best ways to combat bots and spammers right, and also avoids the life impacting edge cases when a real person gets banned by whatever automated system with no hope of recourse.

This was the original finding of paid accounts for SomethingAwful forum. 21 years ago.

It seems to have worked too. Originally free accounts were great for getting people to sign up on social media websites. Well now it seems like we are approaching saturation, and most people with internet have an account on the most popular social media sites. Probably a good time to go back to paid accounts again.

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