IMO there are two critical components to fixing the social media business model:
1. The platform/provider/server needs to work for the users, not for some shady third party like the advertisers. The most obvious way to do this is to have the users pay for the resources that they consume. There are alternatives, too -- users could band together to form cooperatives, or some benevolent foundation could kick in a lot of funding. (This last one is the current model for Signal; I guess we'll see how well it lasts...)
2. Key to making #1 work is that all the content needs to be end-to-end encrypted. Otherwise the platform will be too tempted to also start doing targeted advertising, in addition to charging for access.
Neither of these is all that difficult. We have all the technology right now. Mostly we just need to get people together and do it.
Who do you think is going to pay for social media?
Are they still going to pay when most people leave the service because they won't pay?
What regular person would rather pay then see ads? If you gave people tvs they would put up with the ads. If you give people free dialup internet they would put a banner across their browser.
Paying is a non-starter.
End to end encryped what? Posts/videos? Who cares..
I don't care how many people have netflix, spotify or cable when I purchase nor does it affect my experience. I watch the same movies if you have it or not.
If they charged for youtube less people will signup, less people will make content, more people will leave more content producers will leave. The values goes down.
Parents may buy space private space for photos/videos. Dropbox, icloud, google drive. But that isn't necessarily social media. Twitter, facebook or instagram would not survive on parents buying children accounts.
"How’s Spotify doing these days"
Doesn't spotify have ads? You could buy a subscription.. you also could buy a subscription to youtube.
It’s the only thing we have that can prevent the server(s) from analyzing everyone’s posts, including images, to build a tracking profile that would make an East German secret policeman blush.
1. The platform/provider/server needs to work for the users, not for some shady third party like the advertisers. The most obvious way to do this is to have the users pay for the resources that they consume. There are alternatives, too -- users could band together to form cooperatives, or some benevolent foundation could kick in a lot of funding. (This last one is the current model for Signal; I guess we'll see how well it lasts...)
2. Key to making #1 work is that all the content needs to be end-to-end encrypted. Otherwise the platform will be too tempted to also start doing targeted advertising, in addition to charging for access.
Neither of these is all that difficult. We have all the technology right now. Mostly we just need to get people together and do it.