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Comment by codetrotter | Hacker News Reader

I think X should get credit for this move anyways. Them charging for access may make more people comfortable with the idea of paying for social networking, so that in the future more people will join when new social networks are made that don’t mine the data of the people

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> Them charging for access may make more people comfortable with the idea of paying for social networking, so that in the future more people will join when new social networks are made that don’t mine the data of the people

Won’t that just make people get used to paying and having their data sold? Why would future companies not follow that same model?

> Why would future companies not follow that same model?

Because some companies are happy to be profitable without having to squeeze out ever last cent possible of their customers.

When enough people are willing to pay for social media, someone will realize that there is room to build a business that doesn’t abuse its users and they will have enough money to run it.

That's optimistic thinking. I don't believe that will happen even if people realize that it is possible. Because tracking is not detrimental enough to user experience that people move off of existing platforms.

paying customers is the most desirable target audience for Ads.

Then those happy companies get sold to people that _do_ want to squeeze out the last cent possible of their customers. And then they will start collecting their user's data and do nefarious things with it

WhatsApp did the $1/yr thing a long time ago. Here is an article from 2016 about them scrapping it.

https://venturebeat.com/mobile/whatsapp-subscription/

This might be different though because this is led by Elon Musk, who has always somehow managed to come out well despite bad looking decisions,

Like pard68 though, I have no skin in the game and have also given up on social media.

... "This bad idea is actually good because Naughty Old Mr Car is magic" is a _hell_ of a take. Perhaps companies should simply have their policies dictated by that octopus that predicted World Cup game outcomes.

I donate monthly to my Mastodon instance, so it can afford to be an ad-free space. It doesn't take that much.

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