Ultimately he wants all users to be paying users.
Louis Rossman has stated in a few of his Youtube videos that he would make more money if you sent him $1.00 than if you watched adds in a years worth of videos. I don’t imagine that Twitter or Reddit are any better.
I think that what we’re actually seeing is the death of advertising supported services. There’s just not enough money in adds to be viable and there’s no more free investor money to burn.
This is however not something I think we, as consumers, should necessarily celebrate. This also means that we are very likely nearing the end of the “free” web that we are used to.
No, I’m not saying that selling out one’s personal integrity is preferable, but if it turns out that advertisement as a business model effectively isn’t sustainable, we will just have to accept the reality that we will more and more commonly have to actually pay to access content and services on the web.
I see it more as us going back to the good old days. Websites and social platforms get hosted by interested people with the extra money to get a server going, whether it be for a unique website or an instance in the fediverse or other decentralized networks. Donation supported, nothing required. Maybe some donor icon.
Take the internet back. Quit supporting websites by big companies who have money and whose goal is to use you as the product. Support your fav nerds hosting the platforms you enjoy using. The internet had social websites before FB and twitter. We don’t need companies to run the internet for us.
