I know a lot of us use ad-blockers and the like so we don’t see ads often anymore. But we can get some insight as to how much certain “services” make by showing ads to the average customer when they have paid ad-free subscriptions available. YouTube, for example. Maybe streaming services.
I’m curious how much most things would cost in this case, especially since so many “services” tend to have maintenance and upkeep costs.
How much would Facebook cost to use if it were ad-free? Snapchat? Windows? (Which is extra gross for having all of an up-front cost, ads embedded, AI included, and pushes for paid subscriptions of its own complementary products…)
We don’t have to talk in hypotheticals. Mastodon is free. Signal is free. Linux is free. The cost is zero. Yes they all get money from donations and from commercial contracts, but it’s absolutely possible to run services like these without squeezing every last pfennig out of every user.
Linux is subsidized by a consortium of major tech companies supporting a common code base as it is cheaper than relying on one vendor.
Signal is run by a non-profit group which is funded by various grants.
Mastodon is a combination of above, the code being subsidized by a consortium of developers and individual servers funded by various means.
To just say “it is free” ignores the economics of why they are free.
The cost of those to the service provider is generally not zero though. And cost is per user, and these all have fewer users than mainstream social media and “services”.
Though Linux is an exception here, with it costing only the time of hobbyists (at least as far as I know)
You asked how much it would cost to use. The existence of these smaller services proves that the answer can be as low as free, if someone wants a thing to exist and is willing to cover the cost of hosting it (which can be as low as buying a Raspberry Pi, assuming you already have internet).
Fair!