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Elon Musk says Twitter, now X, is to charge all users subscription fees
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
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If all 330 MAUs paid this, Twitter would ~~net~~ gross $3.6bn/month.
Crucially, they absolutely will not.
Not only that, it'll create a vicious cycle where engagement drops to the point where the people who still post on Twitter (politicians, reporters, celebrities, etc) no longer bother with it, thus leaving much less content for paying users, with the end game being that Twitter is the place where shithead tech bros and neo-Nazis talk to each other and pretty much nobody else.
Just as nature intended.
Obviously it depends on the price, but maybe 10% of a free userbase will be willing to pay. The problem is, that userbase is coming to the platform mostly for rapid news and celebs. Will it still be the best place for rapid news with a 1/10th of the userbase? Will celebs want to stay on the platform when their reach is reduced to 1/10th? I think this likely just starts a death spiral that substantially shrinks the userbase.
I mean I’m deleting it. I only have it because articles/friends/etc. have a link with something relevant. I only look at it out of convenience, not because it’s the only source. I am more than happy to take the extra step to Google whatever people were trying to show me moving forward. Though I imagine this will also have a chilling effect on the amount of Twitter links I am sent any given month.
Not a chance he is going to get the value up to $44B.
I am finding it pretty easy to say, personally.
Torching the brand goodwill alone is a mistake that a 2nd year MBA student would mock you for.
Well, for the sake of context let's note that we are two people talking about it on Lemmy, for free, with no corporations involved.
Whatever is next for Musk, I think if centralised social media needs to turn a profit then it's probably not going to remain a central fixture of online society forever.