This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Last line of the article: "Just like choosing not to ride on airplanes isn’t really an option, for many, using social media isn’t much of a choice either."
Holy crap. We have reached that point. As someone with no social media, it just amazes me how people have let these apps become ingrained in their lives. Sad in my opinion.
someone with no social media
Doesn't Lemmy qualify? Well, it's definitely not paid.
Depends. Everyone claims they are on social media platforms to stay in touch with family and friends. I know no one on here and am fine with the anonymity. So it's up to you if you count this.
I personally never counted Reddit and am not counting Lemmy as a social media. Both Reddit and Lemmy are just a really huge forum which contains many subforums.
Forums are social media though. Social interaction, community building, content sharing. All is there. Being anonymous does not have much impact on that.
True, but I think the big difference is that social media in the way of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc are tied to your identity IRL and include people that you actually know IRL, therefore are almost an extension of your life, whereas lemmy, reddit, and other iterest-specific forums have to option of decoupling from real life.
Interesting point. However, I think there are many anonymous account on Twitter, for example. Yet it is no different from others.
But you are still socializing with us despite not knowing our real names, so this and Reddit would definitely qualify as social platforms. Twitter was also mostly anonymous for its 16 years prior to Elon, and it has definitely always been considered social media.
In tbe strict sense, probably. In what most people would call social media, probably not.
Last line of the article: "Just like choosing not to ride on airplanes isn’t really an option, for many, using social media isn’t much of a choice either."
That, and not only is not riding on an airplans an option for a lot of people, its their reality for a lot of people and out of reach financially. Way to be completely out of touch, Gizmodo. Couldn't have used a worse example lol.
I think it’s referring to flights required (and paid) by your job. When a job of mine required me to be in Brussels in two days, I couldn’t tell them that I‘m hitchhiking there for the next month instead.
I think you're misreading it. In the same way as there are people that need to ride on planes (for example for their job, or to move to where they have a job, etc), there are people that need to use social media.
For example, if you own an online store you really need to have a social media presence. Same if you are an artist, and live off of commissions. I'm sure there are plenty more examples.
Also, Facebook groups are now how most extracurriculars are handled in schools, so if you have kids and you want to be involved in their activities you don't have much of an option.
I think the author might be referring to businesses who use social media to reach and connect with customers, however if your customers don't see a value in paying for social media they won't use it and it won't be that necessary for those small and medium businesses.
Yeah that's one of the stupidest comparisons that they could make. Transportation is a necessity, sharing what you're doing to the entire world isn't a necessity. I'm 37 and grew up with MySpace and I was part of Facebook back when it was still The Facebook and was only open to 4 years universities (I got in about 2 years after I was created).
I wouldn't give two shits if every social media company was destroyed tomorrow, including Lemmy and Reddit. They're just time killers to me.
That’s because you’re just looking at the app. People use them to communicate with other people in different ways.
For example if I meet a woman I like, it’s infinitely more socially acceptable to ask for her instagram than it is for her number after meeting.
A lot of my family communicates on Facebook where they can share photos, watch and catch up with each other.
Maybe you can just give up social media. I can too and I did. But for many it’s the only gateway connecting them to other people in a more than convenient way. There’s absolutely nothing sad about that.
Some people are addicted, and it can be toxic for others but it’s utility is still incredible.
Best case scenario, the Fediverse kicks off and becomes main stream enough to replace Meta products and others. Which is what I would love to see, personally speaking.
For example if I meet a woman I like, it’s infinitely more socially acceptable to ask for her instagram than it is for her number after meeting.
Is this really a thing now? Any idea why it's considered more acceptable? It's definitely not a thing in my social circles and it got me curious.
I live in a major city in the US and it’s definitely common place here. A lot of women justifiably don’t like giving out their personal number due to the number of bad experiences with men. By using IG instead, it provides a buffer.
I have asked for and received numbers but most people typically offer some sort of social media first and then only share numbers after you’ve shown that you’re not a raging creep.
Yeah there absolutely have been consequences for me not using it. It’s hard to keep in touch with people and I only date weirdos who are cool with my strange lifestyle.
I love the idea of paid social media.
Theres so few people who'd pay for it that all the social media companies would, hopefully, collapse and cure us of one of the worst technoplagues of the 21st century.
I'd pay some reasonable subscription, say $1 a month to the maintainer of lemm.ee for the promise to keep my data safe. To Zuck and Elon absolutely not.
Imagine paying a company, who sells your data, to see memes
Fine. But imagining it is as far as I will go.
Well, Fediverse it is. When thousand people pay for thousand servers, it's better for everyone - no ads and no fees and the ones hosting the content don't need the money to survive. Some people will voluntarily donate to you, most will not, but in the end everyone is happy.
It works for Wikipedia, which is probably the single most important site on the Internet.
It also works for podcasts, well enough to produce an enormous amount of high-quality content, both from independent productions and networks.
I just wish that Wikipedia didn't donate the money that people donated to it to other charities.
They recently donated a million dollars of their donations to other charitable causes and in theory I'm fine with that but in practice I feel like sort of tricked or betrayed and I just don't like it.
I refuse to ever donate to them again until they swear to never ever do that again.
If it makes you feel any better about not donating, Wikipedia makes money hand-over-fist and absolutely does not need your donation. Their financials are public; they've been in the black for YEARS. They only beg for money because it works. It's gross and exploitative.
*looks around at Lemmy*
I love y'all.
... but also pay to support your instance. Don't be a leech.
Yo can you spot me for a few months?
Yet another reason not to use that stuff, as if we needed more
Would you be opposed to paying to use Lemmy? Someone's gotta pay them bills. Currently it seems to be donation focused, but that might not scale. So what's it going to be Player2@sopuli.xyz, ads, or a "premium Lemmy subscription"/tax/due/contribution?
Some run the servers with the expectation of donations. Some run them at a loss. Some of us selfhost.
There are all a variety of ways to keep Lemmy free, where as Reddit is hosted by Reddit. They decide everything about Reddit.
To be fair, you always paid it... just not with money...
I refuse to be both.
You want me to dodge ads and try to scrape my data from your service in order to use it? Fine.
Want me to pay for the service? Maybe…
I will not support double dipping while pushing ads in my face. Fuck right off.
I remember when cable tv first started the big promise was that since you were paying for it the cable channels would be ad free. Well that lasted about a week.
If they didn’t farm data and charged for it right in the beginning, maybe it would have lasted longer before turning to shit. But demanding payment while farming data is just insane.
Not to mention that they chose the absolute worst time to do this. They are just absolutely despised right now. They are either in the midst of scandal or scandal is just in their rearview. Why would anyone pay for this right now?
As in "they pay me to use their garbage?"
If else: "No."
Know what? "Still no." I already don't use it for free, they're gonna have to pay me substantially before I use it.
Genuine concern,
How did people think stuff like this would be funded?
I’m pretty anti corporation and capitalism, and pro open-source but this just sounds like regular inflammatory content.
There seems to be a disconnect on the internet that everything should be completely free, ignoring all the costs that go into setting up websites and web applications.
The money for it has to come from somewhere. If you want to protect your privacy (which you should) then you’d be better off paying for services like that than not. It’s been circlejerked to death but: If it’s free, you’re the product.
Even Lemmy is not immune. Sure it’s FOSS, but it’s not free to host. Someone has to pay for servers, data, web domains and more.
No matter what you do, if you want access to social media you’re going to have to shell out some cash, somewhere.
Edit: I might get the eventual “oh they’re going to make you pay AND still sell your data so why should you pay?” You don’t. You put your money elsewhere if you were even considering paying. Invest in Lemmy and the Fediverse. Invest in your local server. There’s plenty more options.
Exactly. I'd honestly rather have paid social media than engagement algo and ad-driven social media. When your algorithms chase engagement over all else, it leads to real harms, like the youtube alt-right pipeline. Fediverse ain't perfect, but I like that there's no engagement-chasing algorithm, no ads, just donations.
Not exactly. It's the age of stockholders, and doing what's best for them is the law. They expect unlimited growth
Social media has a natural moat because what matters it what users are there. As long as social media sites don't federate with each other, there will be an evolutionary pressure to start exploiting and get progressively worse as your users are locked-in and you can exploit them for the profit of your shareholders.
Paying improves the situation because the users are customers and not eyeballs to sell, but still -- they're there for their friends and follows. If they can't get those same friends and follows on another site, you can screw them as hard as you like.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Meta plans to charge European users $17 a month for an ad-free version of Instagram and Facebook.
Meta joins TikTok, which confirmed it’s testing its own ad-free subscription plan Monday after Android Authority found a prompt for a $4.99 service buried in the app’s code.
X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, has its famous $8-a-month blue check mark (which also comes with fewer ads and other dubious features), and anyone who isn’t already paying YouTube is familiar with its promotions for the $13.99 ad-free experience.
There’s no word from TikTok about its fledgling subscription tests, but the comments sections on videos about the app’s premium plan are full of users who say they’d love to sign up.
This is a radical departure from the business model that ran social media for the past few decades, where you offer your eyeballs to the advertising gods in exchange for free connections to friends and content creators.
Over the last twenty years, airlines have found ways to charge customers for options that used to be free, including checked bags, seat selection, and priority boarding.
The original article contains 815 words, the summary contains 190 words. Saved 77%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Airline seats could be fixed if the gov had any backbone but social media isn't some essential service so good luck with it.
Facebook has been slowly becoming worse, I don't know if it's the algorithm just not showing me stuff I'm interested in, or all the people that posted interesting stuff left, but I'm using it less and less.
Reddit's quality has gone downhill, lemmy is okay but still small.
