I think it says a lot that we all just expect everything on the internet to be free. YouTube doing all this stuff to try and crack down on adblockers - yeah, we know it won't increase their revenue in any way, but can you really blame them for trying? I think it's probably not unfair to say YouTube is the most expensive website on the planet to run in terms of how much bandwidth they have to serve the entire globe.
Now, yes, Google can probably run YouTube for all eternity and keep it alive via their profits from everything else they do, but I mean, if we did not specifically have Google essentially sinking their infinite money into YouTube just because it's got a captive audience, it would basically Not Exist. The only truly sustainable, economical way to video hosting and streaming really is to paywall it, whether it be paid access for viewers or charging people to upload. So, basically, the Vimeo model.
And then we can talk about how capitalism shouldnt be making these kinds of things effectively impossible unless you're an international multibillion dollar tech firm but that's a whole other conversation. At a certain point the internet just can't be Free anymore. Shit costs money.
Anyways subscribe to Cohost Plus.
I know there was just discourse about "enshittification" but I think that really is the problem here. If YouTube wants to say "$10/month for all the Yous you can Tube," please, take my 10bux, I'm not that cheap, I used to pay for cable for goodness sake.
But there's no trust that they would sustain that deal for any amount of time. That we'd get more than a few months before oops, actually the 10bux level only covers ad-supported basic content at 720p30 but would you like to learn about our exciting upgrade packages?
Yes Ask Me Later
i really do think a key thing here is that all of these companies complaining about the cost built the fact that providing the service for free into their models to gain users they could bait and switch later! it’s one thing to provide a product that people want to use, it’s a whole other thing to rely on having tons of money to let you float until you’ve captured the market.
like you can say that they have to because of capitalism, but that’s the whole purpose of enforceable contract laws and buyer agency— it protects the companies from themselves as much as it does the users. if a company actually had to provide a service for a set amount of time, if their customers really COULD go elsewhere if things turned worse, yea it would make these companies infinitely slower and more conservative but it also means that competitors have to have an actual product and plan to be competitors. we don’t have this on the internet, and we can see what that’s getting us. no wonder it feels like a war between the users and the corpos
sorry one last thing: it’s likely this will not change anytime soon bc the US economy is now fully entwined with this stuff and changing any of it too fast would likely destroy it and cause untold pain to the world economy. so that’s fun!
It's something that crosses my mind a lot - the idea of paying for internet websites and services and such.
Companies need to make money to survive. One way a lot do so is via ads. However, people don't like ads. So, let's say we don't do ads. Let's also say we're not doing a bunch of data harvesting and selling that. Now we need users to pay for our services. But... are people willing to? I don't know almost anyone irl who would pay for things like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc . Hell I don't think anyone I know would even consider paying for something like Cohost Plus. So what else can you do if you're a company? Make a product that people are willing to pay for maybe? But that takes money, and if people already aren't interested, where does that money come from? It just seems like a "ads seem to be the lesser evil" type scenario.
And then from a consumer end. I know personally, I am just now (aged 27) having any sort of financial stability. Even spending $5/ month on CoHost plus feels like a splurge. There's no point in my life, up until this point, that I would've been able to spend money on things like social media. A lot of my friends, similarly, just do not have any sort of extra money to pay for online services. And so I don't like the idea of everything become paid for, as it would seem tragic to me if we just accepted that people won't have money to access the internet for the first 30 years of life.
And so this problem in my head sort of goes round and round. Because not only is it tough on companies to come up with a way to sustain themselves, but also because I'm not sure how many people could afford to browse the web the way they do if every site had a subscription service model (in my head, imagining that ads don't pay enough and so companies would need to switch to this). The next thought is maybe you have a free version of your app/ website for people who can't afford to pay, and then a paid version for those who can pay. But of course, you'll need to give people who pay some benefit. And that benefit has to be good enough for people to feel like it's worth paying. But then... do you grow a user base at all? Do people who can't pay even want to use your site if the free version is shitty? Do people who can pay even bother trying your site, given the free version isn't great?
The "best" solution in my head is pay people enough so they have the extra money to spend and support platforms they believe in. But, of course, that would have to happen nationally and raising wages always seems like such a fight for some reason here in the US. Also, that doesn't really help in the interim.
It's just a shame because the internet has so many wonderful things on it. But the big social media sites are becoming worse and worse to use (in my opinion) and I don't know how any alternatives will survive with the costs associated to hosting sites and content.
