Will you be willing to pay for using Twitter?

It wasn't sinking before he sunk it. It was losing money, but not that much... then instead of making intelligent, reasonable changes, he stuck them with a ridiculous amount of debt, slashed and burned the work force, and scared off half the advertisers.

That's still a lot of suckers.

and you don’t need lemmy/kbin either, but yknow we like it

what’s your point?

Whilst I mostly agree with you, what I use Twitter for, and now Mastodon, is to get real-time updates on projects and events. I follow projects like Asahi Linux (where devs post updates from their personal accounts), or various service providers or trending hashtags to get real-time updates on events, such as say an M365 outage, a zero day vulnerability, or a natural disaster (eg: earthquakes). Sure, there are other sites as well that report on events, but these sites mostly get their updates from Twitter (and not having an account on it would exclude you from participating). Thanks to Twitter, I've been able to interact directly with developers, netsec folks, organisations and just randoms from across the world - all of which, has been convenient to do so via a single platform. It's kinda hard to replicate that sort of interaction across other platforms.

I mean... You don't need Lemmy either yet here you are.

I feel like these comments are from folks who haven't really used it. The traffic on your specific instance isn't really the point most of the time. And the fact that you can find another instance easily if the guy in charge of your instance is an asshole is a pretty huge feature. Who runs the other instance of Twitter you can move to?

You can migrate your account and followers/following lists until you find an instance where the admin isn't a "power tripping asshole" - and I'm not convinced that's a widespread problem in any case.

The Mastodon interface is kinda barebones though still not as bad as I think you are describing, but I migrated (gasp) my entire mastodon account to firefish.social, which federates with Mastodon, with a couple of clicks, and the interface and features there are really great. (And there are also multiple firefish instances to choose from in case the admin becomes an power tripping asshole)

But most importantly:

unless you tune into the echo chamber most instances are, you're not going to have interesting conversations

Why wouldn't you be following people from the broader fediverse? The federated feed on firefish (and on most instances I'd think) scrolls by so fast I have to pause it to read anything. There's plenty being posted. Certainly no less comparatively than I see on kbin/lemmy, and it gets better continuously.

I'm all for using what you like and avoiding what you don't, but this is like an infomercial-level criticism of Mastodon, like when they spend 45 secs showing you how hard it is to scramble eggs and cook them without their forty dollar gadget.

It works "well enough".

unless you tune into the echo chamber most instances are, you’re not going to have interesting conversations.

I don't get this. I've had many interesting conversations with people on Mastodon. And there are a number of interesting people I follow.

there is a lack of actually interesting oc posting people on the masto side of the fediverse.

This is a problem solved by more people joining... And from my POV Mastodon is far more stable and mature than Lemmy is. I've had better conversations there without being swarmed by tankies and ultra-partisans as well.

Perhaps you've chosen bad people to follow?

Even better!

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).

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.

If you want a free platform to speak on, avoid social media all together?

I agree with the social media generally being bad for people, but I'm not sure your reply lines up ha

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?

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?

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

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?

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"?

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Thank you for telling me this and I will try it out.