this is basically the equivalent of "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas"
this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
185 points (86.3% liked)
Technology
34438 readers
161 users here now
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.
Rules:
1: All Lemmy rules apply
2: Do not post low effort posts
3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff
4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.
5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)
6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist
7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
More like they’d rather have a platform of paying neo-nazi users than paying advertisers.
Look at truth social for how that worked.
Let’s see how that works out for them, already seems like it’s going swimmingly
More like "we've tried getting Russian money and it actually worked pretty well."
I can't see why you'd pay for a service that still had ads? It's why I've never gotten cable - if I'm paying, I don't want ads.
The whole "pay to avoid ads" model is so weird though.
Why? Ads are one method of payment, cash is another. The weird model is paying more to remove ads. There should just be two tiers, free with ads, or paid without ads. If t former doesn't make sense, only offer the latter.
Ads are one method of payment, cash is another.
This might be true if the cash payment was equal to the ad revenue per person, but it isn't.
Ad-revenue per person would be a few cents per month, but even if it were $1 per user month, paying $4 or whatever to remove the ads means the ads are punitive. Pay the subscription or we will drive you nuts with shitty ads.
And in that case you probably have an argument against using that service, or perhaps monopolistic practices if they are a natural monopoly. For example, if your energy company charged you $1k to remove ads on your meter, I would completely agree that it's an abuse of their position because it's unrealistic for you to switch to another provider and there's no way the ads are saving you that much off your bill.
My point is that ads should be allowed as a substitute for payment for services. Ad-free tiers should be an approximation of the cost to provide the service to you, with a reasonable amount of profit on top, as should the approximation of ad-revenue. In other words, those two numbers should be largely in-line with each other.
The main issue I have with ad-supported services is that they're frequently a complete violation of privacy. In order to increase the value per impression for ads, they need information about you to serve relevant ads, which means they're likely selling your data to advertisers (or a third party that handles ad personalization). IMO, there should be strict laws around that form of data sharing since that can present a very real security risk to the customer. That's why I'm interested in projects like Brave (just an example, I dislike Brave) that seek to provide ads without the personal data leakage (i.e. Brave could do the personalization inside the browser, and advertisers would only know how many impressions they got and the level of personalized matching for those impressions).
I'm not against the idea of ad-supported tiers, but there should be strict rules surrounding them.
That's fine, your position is reasonable and I can accept that.
Over the years I've become more and more opposed to advertising of any form. It makes me very grumpy - probably unreasonably so.
I understand that services need to make money but $10 / month for something like twitter just seems absurd to me.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
You look at it backwards. It's 'watch ads to avoid paying'.
Paying is the default way to buy something.
load more comments
(2 replies)
I mean, not so much to me. You need to pay for something somehow, either via ads or money.
It’s the pinnacle of modern media. Why w- nevermind.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Without the users, this platform has no value. No one is interested in it already, except for nazis, bigots, and crypto bros. Paying for this garbage makes no sense
Don’t forget sports fanatics and meme shitposters
Those groups of people might be of the misunderstanding that people are still listening to them just because they are paying money.
load more comments
(1 replies)
So it'll end up being a platform of trolls and bigots just screaming into the void and paying for the privilege. What a fabulous idea.
At the point if time, we're just generating free traffic for him by continuously reminding they exist.
Just let Twitter die.
Twitter is already dead. It's X now
But they'd both be dead if we didn't keep posting so many reminders of them
Honestly, I don't know what Jack Dorsey is waiting for. The instant Bluesky leaves its closed beta, basically everyone on Twitter is gonna jump ship, and Twitter's transformation into Truth Social 2.0 will be complete.
The iron has been hot for a long while. What's he waiting for?
Infrastructure I think. The last few waves of invites have brought instability to the system if i recall
I really really hope they eliminate the free tier. That might finally force people to move to other platforms.
This will actually be hilarious because it will out all the state propaganda who will be the only ones willing to pay
Sock puppeting works because it's cheap, requiring payment would be a big spanner in the works.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Twitter Blue was a failure, and they want to double down on it? Hopefully there's a mark on their profile so they get bullied again.
I'm going to sign up and issue a charge back to make sure I get banned as a customer
For someone so clever he do make dumb decisions. I don't have twitter anymore and people like me who left are the reason ad aren't working.
"Ahhh, I know. Memberships, Elon you are a god".
Only people like caturd are the type to buy stuff that gives them a fake sense of popularity.
Once you realize he never was clever, just wealthy, it starts to make more sense.
I will admit I was clueless to it until it was reported more and more. Its important that people understand that he is a very very rich charlatan.
load more comments
(1 replies)
The solution here is simple and it's the same as every other freemium service: milk the whales and serve ads to the plebs. Ideas specific to Twitter:
- animated avatars
- post borders
- badges
- early access to new features
- ad few tiers
Iterate on that and you'll reach profitability, assuming you start with a healthy userbase. The trick is to make them noticeable enough to stroke narcissists' egos, but not so distracting that it turns into a clown show.
Basically, something like Reddit Gold, but broken up into multiple pieces. Those who don't care can ignore it, and those who do can pay out of nose for it.
That Musk doesn't see that just shows how clueless he is. He tried that with the blue check mark or whatever, but he completely changed the meaning behind it, which breaks a huge rule in UX, which is to not drastically change the meaning of existing functionality.
All I can say is. I agree exactly with your statement.
Im from South Africa and that was my initial like for the guy (no other knowledge than that he was South African) but as I got to see him more and more, learn about his background, I realised that he is nothing more than the classic South african rich kid or poes as we call em in SA.
Right around the point where he started calling people pedophiles for not letting him do some crazy thing, I saw that poes he always was, since then I have seen him become more and more of that poes.
I hope everyday he loses everything.
Poes is a vagina in South African Afrikaans but its used more of a diss than an the anatomical description, which would be a dis on vaginas at the comparison.
As tired as I am of hearing about Twitter and Musk, stories of his costly failures always entertain!
I prefer the web version with adblocker for zero ads experience that costs $0
I prefer not using X at all, which is free and improves my mental health. That strategy worked well before Musk bought it too. I recommend trying it.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Musk wants to create a super app like WeChat. He needs credit cards first. He is turning Twitter into his old X.
It's the Apple app ecosystem without people willing to hand over credit card information for iTunes music. Apple won the mobile phone market because they had customers willing to pay for apps.
They will just keep bleeding their loyal base of users dry until there is nothing left for them to give.
This IS the same guy that kept raising the price of FSD despite not delivering on promises.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
According to Bloomberg’s source who attended a Thursday call with X and debt holders that helped Musk finance the acquisition, the company is currently testing Basic, Standard, and Plus variations of the existing premium plan, which currently starts at $8 per month.
However, according to details previously discovered in the X app, the entry-level Basic plan will not reduce the number of ads that users see on the platform, while the Standard tier will show half as many ads — one of the benefits that premium subscribers currently enjoy.
X has not revealed when these new membership tiers will be rolled out in testing or general availability, or what additional benefits (blue check, edit, etc) each plan might include.
During the call, X CEO Linda Yaccarino said that the company’s advertising, data licensing, and subscription revenue is growing quarter-over-quarter “in the high single digits,” and repeated claims from last week’s Code event that around 90 percent of X’s top advertisers have returned to the platform.
X’s finances have been a hot topic for discussion since Elon Musk purchased the company for $44 billion last year (it’s been valued at just a third of that price since).
Musk previously announced plans to boost revenue and eradicate bots by moving to an entirely subscription-based service that would charge every user on the platform.
The original article contains 392 words, the summary contains 221 words. Saved 44%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
why do we insist on giving this guy so much free advertising? move on already lol
view more: next ›