Yeah I think this is a very important point.
I think people will need to learn to accept that there is no such thing as “free”. The current social media sells you to advertisers, taking every bit of data they can get.
So for independent and privacy focused social media, we’re going to have to accept we have to pay for it.
I’ve moved to paying for my email, my file storage, my VPN and my password manager - all for privacy and security. I pay for subscriptions for streaming to avoid advertising. So I would pay for social media.
In the early days of the internet, people accepted paying for things but then the “free” model came along. The fediverse will need to persuade people to pay for it. That may limit it from being the big everyone social medial, but it could be able to become the high quality version of social media that people pay for.
I’m guessing it’s automated stupidity. Meta has cut staff and we’re seeing the results.
Much of the big tech companies have done this over the past year or two, and also been pushing “AI” to replace roles like moderation. I think we’re seeing the results of over relying on AI and cutting staff to boost share prices.
Lets face it, Meta is dying; Facebook is declining, and Instagram seems to be in decline too, the pivot to VR failed and the pivot to AI will fail. It’s best chance seems to be trying to get its hands on TikTok in the US and even that is hardly going to drive the company forward.