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Bluesky teases paid subscription, Bluesky+, in new mockup
(techcrunch.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
The Twitter format is crap. It's bad for search (Mastodon users don't wanna be searchable). There is a huge recency bias: observed in echo waves of circlejerk memes (CEO stuff being the most recent one). It limits discussion depth compared to the reddit format. Here on lemmy people often read all comments, and I like it even if mine get downvoted :)
The subscription model rarely works. Netflix now shows ads, Twitter is still in the red. The donation/self-hosted model is even less successful. I have an unpopular opinion that ads are still the best way to pay for servers and staff. Reddit users hated ads, and that led to them turning into a data repo for Gemini.
I hope Fedi becomes more accepting of ads, but it's a tall order given that it's still mostly pinkos and nerds.
Subscription models for services, even internet services, have worked for a very long time for all sorts of things. I'm not talking about streaming video, I'm talking about things like people paying for online courses or access to something like Harper's Magazine's website (or even the local newspaper's website; my mother has an online-only subscription to the local newspaper). Because is charge is generally reasonable and is also not endlessly rising year over year. Subscription costs to those things go up, but not at the rate of things like Netflix.
Perhaps activitypub services can be viable as a service. I don't think so, but I hope I'm wrong.