Then the correct action is to either create a competitor, or point money/ad views at a competitor.
But like I said, the internet is largely unwilling to do this. You won't make a competitor that is a charity, and the internet at large won't point dollars and ad-views at a nascent start-up in the space.
Did you know that Facebook got started by scraping MySpace using people's real accounts they provided the passwords for, and Reddit got started by anonymously copying popular posts from Slashdot and Digg? Were these correct actions?
None of that has to do with blocking the content behind a login wall. X can still serve ads just fine to non-logged in users. I'm against the site running ads, at all, I'm against mandatory account creation. The internet ran ad supported without mandatory accounts for years.
You can rest assured, 100%, that account walls are also there for money.
I'd be tickled if you argue that corporations create friction for any other reason than money.
The login wall provides one more avenue for profit: selling the data of logged-in users. A profile with a history of likes, read-times, etc is more valuable then a pair of eyeballs that are glazed-over and not clicking on an ad...
Is it that much more valuable to click on an ad than see it? I mean, network television operated on ads you can't click on for decades and made billion-dollar empires.
True, and Britain ruled the waves with wooden warships for a long time. But if they went back to wooden warships they would not rule the waves. The world has changed. Adblock, archive.is, third party mirrors all exist today.
the issue is consistently network effects.
large social media companies arent there because theyre good or that there are no competitors, its that switching cost is high.
you should be pointing at the government to enforce interoperability standards such that logins and so on are not locked to one place.
> But like I said, the internet is largely unwilling to do this
Sorry, what? The internet is unwilling to create twitter clones?
Bluesky, mastodon, pleroma, misskey, diaspora, threads, fucking truth social… there is no shortage of twitter alternatives.
None of which has more the 1-2% of twitters MAU.
If any of those were highly profitable, they would be able to grow. But more profit for them, means less profit for users, means they are stuck fighting over crumbs from Twitter.
You've moved the goalpost.
The internet is happy to create alternatives. Network effects mean it's VERY hard to change the default social network once it's established.
I hate using facebook marketplace, but over the past 6-ish years everybody in my city has moved off craigslist to marketplace - so now I use marketplace because otherwise I can't sell my shit. Am I the problem?
- also, an aside, but threads has 400 mil monthly active users, or at least facebook says that. so ~70% of twitter's audience. But threads is even more locked down than twitter, so not really a win.
>Am I the problem?
Is the person who stays home and doesn't vote the problem?
Network effects are strong, but trends can absolutely upend them with disruptions. This is much harder nowadays, because for each user who refuses ads or a subscription, your VC runway needs to be that much longer, or your megacorp parent (meta) needs to sustain you.
My core point is that if the internet hates the current status quo, they need to drop their current status quo (free/no ads or bust). We're stuck in a local minimum because people absolutely refuse to even consider the idea of paying (in any form) to move out of it, and they pat themselves on the back for it.
This isn’t voting, i’m just trying to sell or buy some crap. For a while I listed stuff both places. In your voting analogy i guess i was voting third party? After a few dozen times where the only responses were from marketplace - i moved on.
Blaming people for doing what’s simplest, is just a way to feel smug and superior.