We Already Solved Subscription Fatigue

+ picking your own algorithms + GenderNet, thought digest, 11.19.2024

Good morning, Deeists.

Sorry I’m late on your videos. I recorded all of them in a cemetery, then I thought it was bad juju to talk about “obscure chatGPT recipes” in a place of eternal rest and deleted them and lit a bunch of candles that were supposed to redeem me for my sins. I understand that this whole line of reasoning is batshit insane. I’ve felt drawn to this cemetery lately—I often feel like I need to walk through it—I wake up each morning excited to go.

Anyway, long story short, I’m crazy.

I'm starting to post more Reels and TikToks. Did you know you can buy a verified badge on Reels and have been able to for quite some time? That Zuck took a cue from Musk feels like it should have been a bigger story than it was.

No one’s said much about it:

Social media subscriptions aren’t as bad an idea as everyone claimed when X rolled them out, verification system issues aside.

For creators and businesses, the value proposition is obvious: if enhanced reach generates more revenue than the subscription cost, it’s a no-brainer. For regular users, a subscription model could improve the platform experience by creating a modest barrier to entry.

I also think subscription barriers could potentially lead to more intentional social media use. I would even go a step further and recommend some sort of time-gating. My argument has always been that right now, Internet use is too passive. People aren’t so much “addicted” to their phones as haunted by constant, ambient use. Bring back logging on and logging off. Rather than arbitrary age gates that can be easily circumvented at best, and at worst are privacy violations, a subscription model forces people to ask, “Is this really worth my $12.99?” Time-gating could do something similar.

I don’t want to hear it with this “subscription fatigue” business, either.

We can handle the subscription model—moving away from it is what was anomalous in my opinion! We’ve historically accepted paid barriers for... most things, particularly media. It wasn’t that long ago that you would have a newspaper subscription, a magazine subscription, a cable subscription, subscriptions to various online services, maybe an MMO, so on and so on.

What’s actually different now isn't the subscription model, it’s the Patreon-style ecosystem. We’ve moved from bundled subscriptions (like cable or magazine packages) to being asked to support individual creators at $5 per month. It’s not the concept of paying for content that’s the issue but the unsustainable expectation that we’ll maintain dozens of micro-subscriptions to individual creators.

A lot of small time creators, and I’m including myself here, don’t offer enough value to justify even $5/month. Which is why I think for people like me, we’ll probably see a return to bundling or networks, in one form or another.

(On that note, please consider a steeply discounted paid subscription…¹ And if you can’t subscribe, please quell my deep fear of obscurity by sharing this newsletter.)

From favorite-journo-of-the-Stack, Chris Stokel-Walker:

Really enjoyed the above article. Even though AI slop abounds, I think we are returning to something closer to the early 2010s Internet, at least in pockets.

Return to RSS feed? Return to Tumblr? Return to Blogosphere?

I’m expanding which social networks I’m on. Please follow me:

• TikTok: @the_computer_room

• Instagram: @thecomputer_room

• BlueSky: @defaultfriend.bsky.social

Finally, I can’t tell what annoys me more. Binary thinking about how DIGITAL WORLD BAD or the leftist complaint that the Internet was “colonized” by the Right. Both really get to me and cause me physical distress.

Ahem. I’ll leave you all with two pieces of Internet history, both from 1984:

1. Upcoming case studies include people like Brianna Wu and Charls Carroll. Where else? Plus, I interviewed friend.com founder Avi Schiffmann.