OP was taking about Tumblr, but I think it applies even more to the Fediverse: users need to develop an ethos of paying to support the sites they use. Otherwise advertisers pay the bills and call the shots.

  • Agent641@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Monetization of users will never be enough. They will also want to sell ads and paid promotional content.

    Source: Back in the day, Imgur was a paid service. You paid $2/mo and you could upload more than 200 images, you could link directly to them, and they did not expire. End of transaction. I paid for imgur and used it as described. But they wanted more. Instead, they cancelled paid accounts, and made it free*. No more direct linking, instead you had to go to their ad-riddled site and also be exposed to the community comments on any image. Eventually they changed the UI to ‘trap’ people into doomscrolling through images while showering them with ads.

    • PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Yep. It’s simply not how greed works.

      They’ll never say “Oh since we’re making millions of dollars a month, we don’t need to sell user data”. They’ll just do both, because there’s always greedy people at the top pushing for every penny of profit.