• jmp242@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    50
    ·
    1 year ago

    I can’t see why you’d pay for a service that still had ads? It’s why I’ve never gotten cable - if I’m paying, I don’t want ads.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        24
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Why? Ads are one method of payment, cash is another. The weird model is paying more to remove ads. There should just be two tiers, free with ads, or paid without ads. If t former doesn’t make sense, only offer the latter.

        • DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          Ads are one method of payment, cash is another.

          This might be true if the cash payment was equal to the ad revenue per person, but it isn’t.

          Ad-revenue per person would be a few cents per month, but even if it were $1 per user month, paying $4 or whatever to remove the ads means the ads are punitive. Pay the subscription or we will drive you nuts with shitty ads.

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            And in that case you probably have an argument against using that service, or perhaps monopolistic practices if they are a natural monopoly. For example, if your energy company charged you $1k to remove ads on your meter, I would completely agree that it’s an abuse of their position because it’s unrealistic for you to switch to another provider and there’s no way the ads are saving you that much off your bill.

            My point is that ads should be allowed as a substitute for payment for services. Ad-free tiers should be an approximation of the cost to provide the service to you, with a reasonable amount of profit on top, as should the approximation of ad-revenue. In other words, those two numbers should be largely in-line with each other.

            The main issue I have with ad-supported services is that they’re frequently a complete violation of privacy. In order to increase the value per impression for ads, they need information about you to serve relevant ads, which means they’re likely selling your data to advertisers (or a third party that handles ad personalization). IMO, there should be strict laws around that form of data sharing since that can present a very real security risk to the customer. That’s why I’m interested in projects like Brave (just an example, I dislike Brave) that seek to provide ads without the personal data leakage (i.e. Brave could do the personalization inside the browser, and advertisers would only know how many impressions they got and the level of personalized matching for those impressions).

            I’m not against the idea of ad-supported tiers, but there should be strict rules surrounding them.

            • DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              1 year ago

              That’s fine, your position is reasonable and I can accept that.

              Over the years I’ve become more and more opposed to advertising of any form. It makes me very grumpy - probably unreasonably so.

              I understand that services need to make money but $10 / month for something like twitter just seems absurd to me.

              • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                Oh absolutely. I think Twitter should be free for personal use and funded by commercial entities that use it since their posts are essentially ads themselves.

                Basically, if you want to be authenticed (the blue check mark or similar), you should pay some recurring bill, like a payment per tweet or a monthly bulk cost. And in return, Twitter will periodically verify that you are you and notify you if your account is likely compromised. There can be different tiers for different types of users, from journalists to politicians to influencers.

                I don’t use Twitter currently, and I certainly won’t start when they introduce subscriptions.

        • Waraugh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          I want to see a service with ads that has a subscription and at the end of every month they distribute all ad revenue to the subscribers.

      • trailing9@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        You look at it backwards. It’s ‘watch ads to avoid paying’.

        Paying is the default way to buy something.

        • DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          Well, it’s the default way of paying for physical objects and professional services.

          It hasn’t really been the default way of paying for online services.

          • trailing9@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            That’s the problem if you want professional online services. Being the product should be the weird option.

      • jmp242@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        I mean, not so much to me. You need to pay for something somehow, either via ads or money.

    • averyminya@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Hulu has somehow gotten away with it from the start, plenty of people don’t seem to mind. In my mind, if the network with greys anatomy has it in their contract that they are exempt from ad-free, what’s stopping other companies from leveraging their shows for that sweet ad rev?

  • dinckel@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    33
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Without the users, this platform has no value. No one is interested in it already, except for nazis, bigots, and crypto bros. Paying for this garbage makes no sense

  • drlecompte@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    23
    ·
    1 year ago

    So it’ll end up being a platform of trolls and bigots just screaming into the void and paying for the privilege. What a fabulous idea.

  • Auzy@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    1 year ago

    At the point if time, we’re just generating free traffic for him by continuously reminding they exist.

    Just let Twitter die.

  • slumlordthanatos@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    1 year ago

    Honestly, I don’t know what Jack Dorsey is waiting for. The instant Bluesky leaves its closed beta, basically everyone on Twitter is gonna jump ship, and Twitter’s transformation into Truth Social 2.0 will be complete.

    The iron has been hot for a long while. What’s he waiting for?

    • Zeragamba@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      1 year ago

      Infrastructure I think. The last few waves of invites have brought instability to the system if i recall

  • sculd@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    1 year ago

    I really really hope they eliminate the free tier. That might finally force people to move to other platforms.

  • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    1 year ago

    This will actually be hilarious because it will out all the state propaganda who will be the only ones willing to pay

      • _bug0ut@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        How do they account for a service like privacy.com which allows you to generate multiple dummy card numbers for a single card?

        If the cost of subscription is, instead, the barrier to entry then all we’ll end up seeing is parties who have the resources for wide spanning scams or propaganda or whatever it is - and if they’re paying then they expect to profit or score gains in some way that justify their costs, which likely means they’re effective at what they do

  • 👁️👄👁️@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Twitter Blue was a failure, and they want to double down on it? Hopefully there’s a mark on their profile so they get bullied again.

  • REdOG@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    1 year ago

    I’m going to sign up and issue a charge back to make sure I get banned as a customer

  • Kofu@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    1 year ago

    For someone so clever he do make dumb decisions. I don’t have twitter anymore and people like me who left are the reason ad aren’t working.

    “Ahhh, I know. Memberships, Elon you are a god”.

    Only people like caturd are the type to buy stuff that gives them a fake sense of popularity.

    • Conyak@lemmy.tf
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Once you realize he never was clever, just wealthy, it starts to make more sense.

      • Kofu@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        I will admit I was clueless to it until it was reported more and more. Its important that people understand that he is a very very rich charlatan.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      The solution here is simple and it’s the same as every other freemium service: milk the whales and serve ads to the plebs. Ideas specific to Twitter:

      • animated avatars
      • post borders
      • badges
      • early access to new features
      • ad few tiers

      Iterate on that and you’ll reach profitability, assuming you start with a healthy userbase. The trick is to make them noticeable enough to stroke narcissists’ egos, but not so distracting that it turns into a clown show.

      Basically, something like Reddit Gold, but broken up into multiple pieces. Those who don’t care can ignore it, and those who do can pay out of nose for it.

      That Musk doesn’t see that just shows how clueless he is. He tried that with the blue check mark or whatever, but he completely changed the meaning behind it, which breaks a huge rule in UX, which is to not drastically change the meaning of existing functionality.

      • Kofu@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        All I can say is. I agree exactly with your statement.

        Im from South Africa and that was my initial like for the guy (no other knowledge than that he was South African) but as I got to see him more and more, learn about his background, I realised that he is nothing more than the classic South african rich kid or poes as we call em in SA.

        Right around the point where he started calling people pedophiles for not letting him do some crazy thing, I saw that poes he always was, since then I have seen him become more and more of that poes.

        I hope everyday he loses everything.

        Poes is a vagina in South African Afrikaans but its used more of a diss than an the anatomical description, which would be a dis on vaginas at the comparison.

  • trailing9@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    1 year ago

    Musk wants to create a super app like WeChat. He needs credit cards first. He is turning Twitter into his old X.

    It’s the Apple app ecosystem without people willing to hand over credit card information for iTunes music. Apple won the mobile phone market because they had customers willing to pay for apps.