pay for digital social spaces

While Meta’s paid messaging tools brought in about $1 billion last year — peanuts compared to the whopping $132 billion the company earned from ads — paid messaging revenue is growing far faster than ad revenue and has more than doubled since early 2023.

🧠 The puzzle of vanishing member dues - Part 2

I wish more media / subscription products didn’t have auto-renew as an unchangeable default.

Any time I see that - even if it says “cancel at any time” - it deters me from taking action in that moment because I’m worried about forgetting to cancel it later, and then getting charged $19.99 or whatever.

A better approach would be: we’ll charge you $10

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Centralised moderation isn't the only option that doesn't work. We also need to eliminate any option that doesn't have a credible mean of doing the work — and it's a lot of work, meaning that either someone needs to get paid or you need a lot of volunteers. And punting it to the users can never work.

It's almost like the equivalent of going to mom and pop shops, not relying on these bigger anomalies to dictate our spending habits and our viewing habits and our work habits. And I think that there's a future in this world where Patreons and OnlyFans and Substacks and all these things, we're going to start supporting each other

Sometimes it can feel like the online spaces you spend time in are working against you, pushing you toward things that their owners value instead of what you value—and harnessing your energy to fuel the very things you hate. Like me, you probably know the feeling of spending too much time gorging on digital junk food, wasting precious moments of... See more