Ask HN: How to avoid social media enshitification, if no one pays for it?

25 points

3 years ago

During the time of "The Social Dilemma", the idea of "if you are not paying for the product, you are the product" was so often repeated that it became a cliche. Everyone was talking about how bad all of the tech companies were tracking you, how Big Tech was destroying small businesses with their practices, how it was responsible for destroying mental health of younger people and even how it was destroying civic debate by increasing polarization and deepening the political and ideological divide.

Today, during an interview where Elon Musk merely suggests that Twitter could start charging from all users as a way to fight the spammers and to keep away people who do not actually bring value to the network [0], all of the reports are about how stupid the idea is and how such a move would kill Twitter.

One could brush it off as mere "Musk derangement Syndrome" or sensationalist media trying to capitalize on the latest current thing, but as someone who has been working on a "healthy" alternative to social media that works on the exact same principle of charging small amounts from all users [1], and struggling to figure out if this can ever be a viable business [2], I am genuinely puzzled: if every company that offers free services is "evil" and people do not want to pay for access to networks, how the hell is this whole thing supposed to work?

Is this just another example of people virtue signalling and failing to (literally) put their money where their mouths are, or is there any real alternative to this that I am not seeing?

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/19/elon-musk-twitter-x-subscription-fees-users-posts