this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
1148 points (98.2% liked)
Memes
8096 readers
1633 users here now
Post memes here.
A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme.
An Internet meme or meme, is a cultural item that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. The name is by the concept of memes proposed by Richard Dawkins in 1972. Internet memes can take various forms, such as images, videos, GIFs, and various other viral sensations.
- Wait at least 2 months before reposting
- No explicitly political content (about political figures, political events, elections and so on), [email protected] can be better place for that
- Use NSFW marking accordingly
Laittakaa meemejä tänne.
- Odota ainakin 2 kuukautta ennen meemin postaamista uudelleen
- Ei selkeän poliittista sisältöä (poliitikoista, poliittisista tapahtumista, vaaleista jne) parempi paikka esim. [email protected]
- Merkitse K18-sisältö tarpeen mukaan
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Most websites started out free because the Web is very close to being "post-scarcity".
Running a simple but successful website used by tens of thousands of people can be done in your spare time for cheaper than a Spotify subscription. A hobbyist website about fishing with 10.000 monthly users can probably be hosted reliably enough for $10/mo, plus a few hours of work. Even if you value your time highly (say, $50/h), that's still a "$200/mo" website (almost all of which is time you're billing to yourself). The breakeven point is then at $0.02/monthly user (and the more users you have, the lower the cost per user, down to fractions of fractions of a cent for a really big text-based website).
In that context it's next to impossible to fairly pay for the service of running a text-based website. Payment processing costs are going to be, by far, the biggest share of the pie, which is ridiculous. So, advertisments and datamining it is (or was; datamining without explicit consent is at least illegal in the EU). Alternatively, donations (this is Twitch's core business model, with which they're even profitable in some markets, despite offering the most expensive service: realtime transcoded video).
Of course a news website also has salaries to pay. That significantly shifts the balance in favor of "pay for the service", unfortunately that runs counter to user expectations. Plus the historical context of traditional news orgs subsidizing their new websites with traditional revenue streams, then finding themselves cornered when the web turned out to be more than just a fad or a hobby.
Another problem with additional revenue is feature bloat. Look at reddit, the website originally was actually really cheap to operate and was actually profitable on Reddit Gold alone (donations being a very common business model on the internet which IMO makes the most sense in most situations given the low costs).
But they had to add an image host (sure, imgur was probably not happy to be footing the bill) as well as a video player (why?), chat service (where's the business value?!), a brand-new but completely unoptimized front-end UI, a mobile app (despite third-party devs already offering superior options FOR FREE), etc.
Reddit's enshittification was caused by an overabundance of revenue from external investors asking for continuous growth, not from any inherent shortcoming in the original business plan. Same goes for pretty much every other enshittified website.
Exactly this.