Will you be willing to pay for using Twitter?

Elon Musk said he will charge all X/Twitter users a fee to be on the platform. He suggested that such a change would be necessary to deal with the problem of bots on the platform.

“It’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots," said Elon. I can’t believe that this is the only solution he can think of.

Dealing with bots would be Elon Musk’s responsibility, considering he’s the only one profiting significantly from X, not us. Elon Musk steals our data and censors each of our posts, now he even expects us to pay to clean up the mess he created.

Plus, the problems with X go beyond just bots. The algorithm and programming decisions are negatively impacting user experience and manipulating people’s minds.

We want a town square where everyone is free to have & voice an opinion. I do not believe we have to pay ”a small monthly payment” for such a place, especially in a country that should value these freedoms & suppressing ideas.

smileyhead,

For this money I would rather donate, pay for membership or create my own Mastodon instance.

m13,

Oh yes, certainly. Wow Mr Musk you’re such a genius and good decision maker, please start charging for Twitter. Please don’t listen to the naysayers and go ahead with the brilliant business strategy. I’m definitely not taking delight in your constant series of self-owns.

Krauerking,

I’d really love if we could all convince him to make it like $20 a month to make sure no gross poors are still there afterwards either and watch all his sycophants idiot followers realize they are also to poor for that and it end up completely empty.

jazzkob,
@jazzkob@lemmy.world avatar

no I’m not willing to play for using twitter, I’ll just delete my account.

as for the “it’s the only way to combat the army of bots” comment - how is that the army of bots only became a problem after twitter became x? i never had a problem before but now my every tweet is liked by a kinsley, madeline, josephine, mia or layla. it’s crazy.

oh, maybe that’s one of the microservices they shut down

the_robomafia,
@the_robomafia@lemmy.world avatar

I’ll just leave these here https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/6f98d86c-0420-4a8b-adbb-dd9830e002c5.jpeg?format=jpg

Fal,
@Fal@yiffit.net avatar

Why would you leave this trash here?

Valmond,

Urgh why is this “technology”

It all sounds like “Dude is thinking about maybe making changes on some thing …”

But yeah from now on I’ll just downvote.

Blapoo,

I’d happily pay a monthly fee for twitter to stop existing

jinarched,
@jinarched@lemm.ee avatar

Nah, I’ll definitely get that latte instead.

cryomancer20x6,

This seriously does not belong in a Technology community.

t4k3,

Sorry but I’m new to Lemmy. Which community should I go? I’ll post there next time.

cryomancer20x6,

!enoughmuskspam is way more in line for this.

obinice,
@obinice@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t use fascist websites at all, I’m certainly not going to pay for one. Come now.

Pohl,

We have reached the point where I want answers from any person or organization that is still active on twitter. They are actively legitimizing nazis. If you are on twitter, you are part of the problem. I’m not gonna draw lines around which people on a right wing reactionary platform are the “good ones” any more.

theKalash,

I wouldn’t be willing to use if I was getting paid.

rglullis, (edited )
@rglullis@communick.news avatar

For those that are saying “no” because it’s Musk: would you be willing to pay to your account on Lemmy, Mastodon, or any other social network that you happen to use?

Let me be specific: I am not asking if you donate or contribute to any server. I am asking if you’d sign up to a social network that required payment from every user as a measure to avoid spammers and to keep the service running.

OhTheMoose,

It’s tough because we’ve had “free” for so long of so many services. But I honestly think yes, as long as it was something very low like $5/month at most.

rglullis,
@rglullis@communick.news avatar

What if I tell you that for $5/month you can have a Mastodon account and bring 9 more of your friends?

AWittyUsername,

I would yes. If it was a reasonable price and guaranteed that my data wouldn’t be monetised.

rglullis,
@rglullis@communick.news avatar

Yes, offering a service completely free of ads and tracking is a irrevocable principle on Communick. Can you let me know what you think of the pricing?

RememberTheApollo_,

No. Not today at any rate. I probably would have supported a subscription for Reddit 5-8 years ago. The community and content was better. Lemmy/Kbin/Mastodon hasn’t caught up to that level yet so I don’t see a point in paying for that. Facebook has gone full stupid - they should pay me for all the data mining they use me and my connections for. I rarely use FB for the social aspect anymore, I belong to many hobby and interest groups on it and use it more like a forum than a “highlight reel of my life” thing.

rglullis,
@rglullis@communick.news avatar

Lemmy/Kbin/Mastodon hasn’t caught up to that level yet so I don’t see a point in paying for that.

Isn’t that a chicken-and-egg problem? If all the other alternatives are crap but can survive because of their deep pockets, how can we ever expect the Fediverse to grow without supporting it regardless of its current size?

RememberTheApollo_,

That’s above my pay grade. I honestly don’t know. However, I’ll offer that Lemmy instances are somewhat analogous to the hobbyist or special interest forums of yesteryear. A “webring” of sorts. Smaller, cheaper, manageable by dedicated individuals…

They’re not massive and centralized servers requiring all that goes with operating and maintaining them. Ad injection, legal teams, CEOs to pay…the fediverse is a completely different animal compared to big social media. It exists because of lots of little “pockets” and not the deep pockets of centralized social media.

rglullis,
@rglullis@communick.news avatar

I’ll offer that Lemmy instances are somewhat analogous to the hobbyist or special interest forums of yesteryear. A “webring” of sorts. Smaller, cheaper, manageable by dedicated individuals…

I’d would hope that was the case with Lemmy, but it seems that the majority of people that moved are just going to the largest instances and trying to replicate what they had on Reddit.

For Mastodon, there are indeed a good number of servers run by a small group of friends who simply don’t care about its cost, but it’s getting pretty clear that any instance with more than 1000 active users is simply not sustainable on donations alone. Every month there is a new instance closing down because the admins realized that the cost per user are growing faster than the donation base.

RememberTheApollo_,

That’s unfortunate, and doesn’t bode well for the growth of this platform.

rglullis,
@rglullis@communick.news avatar

Yes, and this is why I’ve been saying for months already that if we really want to have a viable alternative to shit services we get from Big Tech, we need to start putting our money where our collective mouth is.

RememberTheApollo_,

That’s a tough hill to climb. The internet grew on the largesse of individuals who contributed time and financial support to smaller endeavors, whether it be software or a website. It’s going to be all but impossible to get people to pay for it when even big services like Facebook are free, that’s the conundrum and why ad revenue and personal profile mining is used to fill the hole. Unfortunately costs have risen sharply alongside bandwidth demands, so one can’t run a basement server without bottlenecking on size or costs long before reaching critical mass for a community - and that’s what you mentioned in regards to lemmy.

Like I said…above my pay grade. I hope there’s some way a distributed network like Lemmy can succeed, I really enjoy what it’s becoming. Maybe a hub-and-spoke system will be the final form…big instances supported by more commercial means and smaller instances run by individuals and private funds.

rglullis,
@rglullis@communick.news avatar

I hope there’s some way a distributed network like Lemmy can succeed, I really enjoy what it’s becoming.

And to go back to your original response: isn’t that at least worth of some appreciation? Do you need to wait for the network to grow to start supporting it now by subscribing to a provider that costs $10/year (less than a dollar per month)?

RememberTheApollo_,

I’m not into supporting alpha or beta versions, and honestly I don’t spend enough time here to justify a subscription fee. If it were more fully fleshed out and had a lot more of the niche communities I enjoy, you bet…$10 or even $20/year would be worth paying to support the servers.

rglullis,
@rglullis@communick.news avatar

Ok, we will start going in circles already, but isn’t that a bit of a “self-defeating prophecy”?

You say you like what it’s becoming, but you don’t want to support bootstrapping it. At the same time, history is showing us that any attempt to make the fediverse more popular is making the instances to crumble under their own weight because there is not strong backing after a certain size.

It’s $10/year that we are talking about here, not a life-changing investment. If everyone keeps expecting high-quality content and an already optimized system that is able to be a home of billions of internet users (because the only realistic way for you get all the niche communities here will be when there are so many people here to the point that makes even the long tail a sizable group), then we will never get it.

CaptainAniki,

deleted_by_author

    •
    rglullis,
    @rglullis@communick.news avatar

    I understand the sentiment, but I can’t stop feeling that it is too self-centered. I certainly agree that we do not need a billion people on the Fediverse, but at the same time I feel some moral imperative to free the billion people that are stuck on Big Tech networks, and we need to build an alternative for them.

    EngineerGaming,
    @EngineerGaming@feddit.nl avatar

    I effectively pay to use my IRC, XMPP and email, since I rent a VPS. But that payment earns me much more pleasant usage experience (in case of my IRC bouncer) and a lot of cotrol over my servers in case of the latter two. So while paying a subscription feels a bit bad, I think it’s worth it.

    rglullis,
    @rglullis@communick.news avatar

    We can’t expect everyone else to self-host. The question is, what would be the most viable solution for a better (ad free, Surveillance Capitalism free) Internet that can work at scale?

    sir_reginald,
    @sir_reginald@lemmy.world avatar

    small communities of self-hosters that offer the services to those who don’t possess the knowledge to do it themselves. These communities would self-host federated protocols (eg XMPP) so people can interact with others no matter which server they use.

    Ideally maintained through users donations. If you want to be less idealistic, maybe small co-ops which charge a reasonable monthly/annual fee and provide free services for those who can’t really afford to pay.

    rglullis,
    @rglullis@communick.news avatar

    A bit too vague. Please:

    • Define what the number of people in the average “small community”.
    • Define “Reasonable monthly/annual fee”.
    • Define what would be the cut-off point to “can’t afford to pay”.

    The reason that I am asking you to be specific is that there is a good chance that professional providers can be more efficient than any “community-based” solution. We can have hundreds/thousands of independent professional service providers, each serving around 100-500k people, which would make a sustainable and healthy market. On the other hand, I sincerely doubt that we would be able to serve the 2 billion people on e.g Instagram by having millions of “community based” instances of Pixelfed.

    schnurrito,

    Donations. Wikimedia proves that some people will want to donate if they find something useful.

    rglullis,
    @rglullis@communick.news avatar
    • The operational costs and usage patterns of wikipedia are completely different from a social media website.
    • Donations only “work” if you count all the labor done by volunteers as free. The Wikimedia Foundation might be swimming in cash, but the mods and editors don’t see a penny out of it.
    renormalizer,

    Isn’t that the same for Reddit or Lemmy? The content creators and mods don’t see a penny either. Operationally, a social network probably requires a lot more compute power and somewhat more bandwidth compared to a site that serves mostly static content. But I don’t see why small donations shouldn’t cover that. The cost per user seems moderate, otherwise few people could afford to run an instance with 1000s of users without charging them.

    rglullis,
    @rglullis@communick.news avatar

    (on reddit) content creators and mods don’t see a penny either.

    Yeah, but since when is this considered fair? Facebook has one million faults, but at the very least they pay their moderation and safety teams.

    The cost per user seems moderate, otherwise few people could afford to run an instance with 1000s of users without charging them.

    Is there any donation-based instance where the admins can make a living out of their labor? Even mastodon.social with more than 6 million users can only manage to have two developers on payroll, and they pay themselves a ridiculously low salary.

    schnurrito,

    I don’t see that big a difference there tbh. The WMF nowadays also has a paid trust and safety team like a social media platform.

    rglullis,
    @rglullis@communick.news avatar
    • The entirety of the English Wikipedia can be stored in a single commodity hard disk. The entire database (with revisions and all) is less than 1TB. All other wikipedias combined amount to something similar. This is probably less data than what Reddit ingests every day.
    • Less than 0.05% of the Wikipedia users have done any type of contribution to the content. The absolute majority is just visiting to read it.
    • The content of an encyclopedia changes way less often than any social network. Any page written can be a resource used for any high-school student doing research for an assignment. How many people bother to revisit week-old memes on Reddit or imgur, let alone something written decades ago? Yet, both Reddit and Wikipedia need to store all their content forever.
    schnurrito,
    • most data on WMF servers is media files, most of them photos; Wikimedia Commons has at this point nearly 100 million of those; probably still less than many social media sites, though
    • this is true, but many people on social media are also only lurkers
    • the WMF projects get lots of changes every minute, just look at the recent changes page
    rglullis,
    @rglullis@communick.news avatar

    The “rule” of social media is that users split 1%/9%/90% on creators (prolific posters), participants (comments and reshares content that might be interesting to them) and lurkers (don’t necessarily signup and only visit to read). That means that we have 200 times more “active” (0.05% vs 10%) users on social media relative to wikipedia. The operational costs and the staff required to moderate these sites should follow this proportion as well.

    SeriousBug,

    I already donate to Mastodon development, and to the Mastodon server I’m on. It’s a good reminder to donate to the Lemmy server I’m on too.

    rglullis,
    @rglullis@communick.news avatar

    Good for you, but I specifically asked if you would join a server that charged from all users.

    Also, if you don’t mind me asking: how much are you contributing, and what if I told you that it would cost you a lot less to sign up to a professionally managed instance than whatever it is you are giving away each month?

    charonn0,
    @charonn0@startrek.website avatar

    A one time fee? Perhaps. But not an ongoing subscription.

    rglullis,
    @rglullis@communick.news avatar

    Why? This is not a one-off cost. You wouldn’t be paying for a product that you bought once and can be used indefinitely. Software needs to be maintained, data needs to be stored, bits need to transported, mods need to be paid for their ongoing work, etc.

    Mind you, I am not talking about price levels of a Netflix or Twitter Blue subscription. I am talking about a much lower price point. $10/year would be more than enough for me to make hosting a large instance a sustainable venture, which would even let me keep my pledge of giving 20% of the profits to the development teams of the upstream projects.

    charonn0,
    @charonn0@startrek.website avatar

    I didn’t interpret the question as pertaining to ongoing costs.

    rglullis,
    @rglullis@communick.news avatar

    Well, the discussion was about Twitter charging a subscription so I thought that was implied.

    You are right though that having a system where simply paying to signup would already help alleviate some of the problems with spammers and bots.

    sucricdrawkcab,

    The only thing that would get me to do it is for sports. It would have to have the games, shows, commentary nonsense and be able to live chat with other fans /players. A full experience of sports. Outside of that not a chance.

    rglullis,
    @rglullis@communick.news avatar

    In my dream world, every basketball or football team (american or the real one) would have its own Mastodon/Peertube instance and fans would sign up to a monthly subscription which would give them exclusive benefits, guaranteed prices for tickets (to kill the secondary market) and maybe even voting rights for larger decisions.

    In my crazy dream world, sport teams would cut the middlemen and stop selling broadcast rights and broadcast everything direct to viewer. The tech already lets us have that, it’s just that the whole thing is already quite profitable for the top execs so they don’t really care about making it more accessible.

    CaptainAniki,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    rglullis,
    @rglullis@communick.news avatar

    This way, you end up paying a lot more than the cost of an yearly subscription, and I am not just saying that because of the cost to rent the server or the electricity to run one at home. It’s the cost of your time as well doing admin duties that can be seen as a hobby for you but for most people is just another unpaid job that they’d rather outsource.

    CaptainAniki,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    rglullis,
    @rglullis@communick.news avatar

    Please explain? I’m not saying that what you are doing is a bad idea, I’m just saying that you might enjoy the process of self-hosting but the majority of people simply just want a worry-free solution.

    BonesOfTheMoon,

    I think I’d pay for Lemmy and Firefish. I like them both a lot. Not like a lot, but a tiny annual subscription fee.

    If they had lifetime memberships like Livejournal did that would be cool.

    Wouldn’t give Elon the lice from my hair though, in the words of the great Maria Callas about her mother.

    rglullis,
    @rglullis@communick.news avatar

    tiny annual subscription fee.

    I’m not hosting Firefish (yet), but I do have $10/year plans for Lemmy and Mastodon. Is that within your idea of “tiny fee”?

    BonesOfTheMoon,

    Absolutely. Thanks for replying, please host Firefish, it’s awesome.

    rglullis,
    @rglullis@communick.news avatar

    To be 100% honest, I think that those that have a very specific server in mind would be better off by running their own instance, which I also do on Communick but still need to add Firefish to the list.

    For the “basic” access, what I’d like to have is only one “single” instance that can “speak” Activity Pub, and then just serve different frontends that can provide the different functionality. This would IMNSHO make more sense because then people could have one single account regardless if they want to do microblogging, share pictures or talk on a forum like Lemmy.

    emax_gomax,

    I don’t think either are really active enough to justify a cost and a payment restriction would just worsen that. I do think lemmy should be supported because the whole concept is what reddit and twitter should’ve been to begin with.

    Meowoem,

    No because it would exclude all the interesting people, I’d much rather donate to keep a door open for all.

    rglullis,
    @rglullis@communick.news avatar

    it would exclude all the interesting people

    Are all “interesting people” so cash strapped that they wouldn’t be able to afford a $10/year membership?

    Anyway, what if I told you that my instance provides “group-based” billing? You could, e.g, get a 10-account package for $5/month and give access to 9 other people there.

    I would still try to come up with some form of vouch or sponsorship-based system, where the paying members get to approve non-paying members if they have a backing sponsor.

    donate to keep a door open for all.

    Donation-based instances are not sustainable. You can see that already with Mastodon. They used to be able to get enough funds to even support upstream projects, now they are invite-only. Turns out that “keeping the door open for all” makes the operating costs rise faster than the revenue from donations.

    Meowoem,

    Interesting people barely have time to pop onto Twitter every now and then, they’re not going to bother if it costs money

    And I guess we’ll see which system ends up bearing fruit, I think we’re already seeing the capitalist walled garden model falter, I suspect your more collectivist model won’t have the momentum to replace it but while the commons might trip and start with a dozen different stumbles the sheer force of its ever growing ubiquity will carry it through.

    Especially as hardware continues to get cheaper and software more efficient, hosting a few thousand users on a federated server is already fairly trivial, its only going to get easier the more hurdles are removed through innovation and tech creep.

    rglullis,
    @rglullis@communick.news avatar

    In terms of costs, the predominant factor is storage, which does not go away and is ever increasing. But anyway the problem of instances with thousands of users is not the cost of hardware, but the labor involved with moderation, security, support…

    DreBeast,

    No. With the current model of social media selling advertising space, user data, and now subscription fees. No, I don’t think I should have to contribute directly from my pocket to these mega media giants.

    rglullis,
    @rglullis@communick.news avatar

    I am not talking about the media giants, existing or yet to exist. I am talking about someone providing access to a subscriber-only Lemmy or Mastodon instance, that could be well federated, and professionally managed and moderated.

    DreBeast,

    No, I don’t think a subscriber-only based model would work. Seems so simple that somebody would have tried it already, but what I imagine is the exorbitant cost of running a popular site.

    rglullis,
    @rglullis@communick.news avatar

    Seems so simple that somebody would have tried it already

    Today you are one of the lucky 10 thousand: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/App.net

    cost of running a popular site.

    I know for a fact that I can run an instance with 15k users and if each one paid $10/year I could make enough to make a living, hire someone to help with moderation and would let me have time to contribute back to the codebase and work on more fediverse projects.

    The beauty of this is that I don’t need to have a “huge” site or a monopoly in the market. Other developers could do something similar, due to federation there could be space even for collaboration and/or expansion into other segments.

    All we need is to get more people to understand that paying $10/year for something they used to have “for free” is a lot better than having your data exploited.

    BrazenSigilos,

    If I had to pay to use a social media service, it would have to be something I found utterly necessary. I’m not a fan of the trend toward everything being a subscription, so if any service unexpectedly changes to a subscription based service, I’m far more likely to experiment with cutting it out of my life and routine to see if I really needed it to begin with. So far out of the hundreds of subscription service I’ve had over the last 15 years, I’ve resubscribed to only 10 or so, and out of those only 3 where because I genuinely valued the service enough to pay for it, rather then because I had gotten an offer for 3 months free, then terminated the account before I was charged for anything. Why pay a provider to use my data for profit and show me ads I have no interest in or desire to see? If I wanted commercials I would watch cable, instead of using a streaming service I explicit choose for not showing constant ads.

    I would treat Lemmy the same way. If I had to pay, I wouldn’t play. There are other options for my time, simple as that.

    rglullis,
    @rglullis@communick.news avatar

    There are other options for my time

    What about the time of the people developing the software and the things that you want to use? Software doesn’t grow on trees.

    Yeah, plenty of things have become subscriptions because some asshole MBA decided that it is better to try to continue milk consumers instead of offering a quality product once. But on the other hand, there are plenty of services that have an ongoing operational cost and can not be priced fairly if we just charge it once. If it is fair to pay our phone lines or water bill for their monthly cost, why wouldn’t it be fair to pay for a digital service that costs every month to host your data, keep it secure and up-to-date?

    hansl,

    Before Musk took over, Twitter was profitable. So you know you can make a profit without asking for subscription, and while being honest with ads (they were labeled and vetted properly).

    rglullis,
    @rglullis@communick.news avatar

    That is not true. Twitter was not profitable and they were never “honest”. They engaged in ad tracking and data mining like all Big Tech.

    hansl,

    Source: www.macrotrends.net/stocks/…/gross-profit

    And at least they labeled their ads accordingly. People have reported that ads were not labeled in their feed in the last month.

    rglullis,
    @rglullis@communick.news avatar

    www.brex.com/journal/gross-profit-vs-net-profit

    uglyduckling81,

    Twitter made a small profit in 2018 and 2019. They lost money in every other year.

    In fact the year before Musk started ranting about buying it, they reported their biggest loss ever.

    The company was a disaster before and after Musk.

    BrazenSigilos,

    When I said there where other options for my time, I meant if I don’t like the service’s conditions, I can choose to not use it at all and do something else with my time. As an example, I don’t like Facebook, mostly due to its privacy violations and seeking disregard for security. So, I don’t use it. I spend my time playing games, or visiting a library, or pursuing a hobby. Facebook is unnecessary to my social life or my existence.

    rglullis,
    @rglullis@communick.news avatar

    There are plenty of things and services that we don’t need to have, yet we pay whenever we use them. In this case here, it’s Lemmy. Do you support it somehow or you just want to leech off it? It’s okay if you don’t pay for it, but don’t pretend you are not using it and don’t be surprised if its development is slow compared with the corporate alternatives.

    BrazenSigilos,

    I’ve already said I don’t pay for anything in Lemmy. If by support you mean, do I contribute code, servers or bandwidth to Lemmy as a project? No, because I don’t have those things to contribute in this field. I only know enough code to announce “Hello World”, I don’t own or operate a server farm or service, and I don’t have enough bandwidth to be able to contribute a reasonable amount to a project. However, I think your argument is starting to lose focus. I have not been advocating leaving social media of all kinds, that would be hypocritical since I’m posting this here after all, I have been advocating for avoiding the use of overly monetized platforms. I also noted that I don’t have an objection to paying for a service I find desirable. I pay for a streaming service for my household, and occasionally purchase apps that I find important. However, I think the over use of ads and subscriptions have polluted the market of software and services. Of course open-source projects, like Lemmy, are going to develop slower then a corporate alternative. But we wouldn’t be here if we all wanted the corporate alternative, would we? I can’t speak for your choice, of course, but I for one use Lemmy because I left Reddit. I use Linux because I prefer it over Windows and despise Mac, and I use Raspberry Pi’s because I prefer to self-host my photo back ups rather then use Google.

    Twitter has become a shit show, not unlike watching Facebook devolve back in the early 2000s. I prefer not to use it because I have better options in life for my time, not because I think I’m better then those who do use it. My original comment was a sufficient explanation of this philosophy, I think. I’m not calling for such extreme measures as cutting all social media from use, I’m reminding with my own example to be cognizant of one’s time and use of services that are not under one’s own control. That can be Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Lemmy, Mastodon, Twitch, Youtube, or any of the numerous other platforms that are available today. Don’t avoid the path if it’s really the one you want to walk, but be aware of your choice and know you have one. That’s all I’m saying.

    muntedcrocodile,
    @muntedcrocodile@lemmy.world avatar

    Hell nar we got mastadon

    Fisch,
    @Fisch@lemmy.ml avatar

    I’m not even willing to use it for free 💀

    FleetingTit,
    @FleetingTit@feddit.de avatar

    I’d be willing to use it if I get paid though. 10$/month and I’d even post something once in a while.

    Uniquitous,

    Oh wait, you’re serious. Let me laugh even harder!

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