this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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provide free app at a loss
grow massive user base and market share
squeeze your userbase for every cent they're worth
Every single time. We got to solve the funding issue some how, I dont want to live in a future run by ads.
It's not just the funding, it's the business overall. Public companies need to show growing revenues year to year, and worse: growing revenues with a minimum yield. A product can grow by attracting more users up to a certain point. Then the only way to grow is by making more money out of the same users base. If the revenue is based on ads:
Freemium is not always working well and Meta never used it. They have no new great idea to extend the product without eating their other products users bases. So the only one left is more ads.
Funding is not the issue, for-profit companies are. Non-profit is the way to go. Federation is even better as individuals/families/small organizations can run their own servers.-
WhatsApp was charging $1-$3 per year before Facebook's acquisition. They had 600M+ users and a team of twelve people. It was beautiful while it lasted.
Hopefully we can carry out the original mission with Signal.
It's not very easy to solve the issue of infinite growth in a world with finite resources. The fundamental issue is that it's just not physically possible, but they keep trying. Either we continue this cycle and eventually destroy the planet irreversibly, or we acknowledge that maybe money isn't everything, and that maybe [the vast majority of] people aren't inherently egoitistical monsters, and we move on to different systems.
The enshittification process in a nutshell.
WhatsApp was not free and already had a massive user base before Facebook bought it.
Hope this will turn people to alternatives.
I'd forgotten about this!!
Wasn’t it like a quid to sign up?
Yeah it was something like that, very low price compared to what SMS were charged for.
@Auth
So that's why we donate to @signalapp
@MazonnaCara89
Eastern Europe loves the app Viber that Rakuten bought, which has had ads for years.
People LOVE a walled garden of their friends are there, too.