How many times have we read or heard, regarding social media, that "if the product is free, you are the product"? The more we interact with the platform, the more data we provide. And this data is then used to create sophisticated models that allow advertisers to reach us with targeted messages. This model, however, is starting to show cracks.
Platforms are struggling to stay relevant, and users are becoming increasingly aware of the damage done by spending too much time on social media. Many are understanding of using social media too much media without understanding the true cost of disclosing their data. The widely promoted disinformation on social media has led to an unprecedented distrust of these platforms. And it is a just distrust.
This is also why social media are trying to fix it (always in the name of profit). A trend that can lead to a revolution in social media, where privacy and content quality become the main values. Here's how the trajectory could proceed, starting with an already visible fact: the collapse in advertising spending.
The big engine: advertising on these models is going downhill
What are the causes? First of all, the current economic situation, which certainly doesn't help. And then, in general, the saturation of these social networks. The censorious atmosphere, the algorithm that only valorizes quarrelsomeness, serious problems for people's psyches, younger species. And two more important factors: the new tug of war over data processing between institutions and social media, and the weight of the changes made by Apple to app monitoring. This reduced the effectiveness of platforms, particularly Facebook, in targeting ads and caused Meta's revenue to decline by approximately $12 billion in 2022 alone.
These too, if you look closely, are the inevitable consequence of what social media has become. When you ask users if they want to give their personal information to a company, most say no. Staying with Apple, only 25% of users joined, meaning that 75% of people who own an iPhone have turned off the tap on free personal data. Meta tried to get around this block, getting fined €400 million for violating the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). And it's just the beginning.
Decreasing advertising spending by brands will be a serious problem for digital platforms, precisely because advertising revenue is their lifeblood. At the moment. And among the desperate solutions to avoid "dying", even if somehow the "old social platforms" are already dead but they don't know it" (cit. from this post) has ticked that of the subscriptions.
End of social media "forever free"
In the beginning it was Twitter. the arrival of TwitterBlue, a paid service that allows users to verify their account, edit tweets, and more for about $8 to $10 a month. And the idea, which is once again pioneered by the much reviled Elon Musk (there must be a reason why he is once again the richest man on the planet, and without selling oil and weapons). The prospect of charging a subscription for the use of social media is ideologically vile: companies have made social media unliveable, and now they make us pay the cost of "cleaning it up". But that's it.
Evidently the move has been implemented, because after Twitter also Meta, which usually copies others, has launched its paid verification service called Goal Verified, which costs $12 per month. For now it includes account verification, the coveted blue badge and exclusive stickers for stories and reels.
The principle, however, at least opens up the hope of seeing social networks improve. A hope unfulfilled for now, because it seems that you simply have to pay for "something" more: then you are free to wallow in sterile controversies and perpetual circles of attention: social media does not seem to want to improve ethically. Far from it. There's even a very delicate smell of apartheid: don't have a Twitter subscription? Say goodbye to two-factor authentication. Don't have the one at Facebook? If they block your account and you want assistants, get in line. A kilometer-long queue.
How it will end
The move to paid subscription models is the last resort for these social media platforms to stay relevant and not die. And it doesn't necessarily work, that it makes enough money to replace advertising revenue. At the moment, Twitter Blue it generates only $28 million per year (Twitter's advertising service generated over $4,5 billion). How long will it take to replace those revenues with subscriptions? If you can do it.
Not to mention that this new aura of "elitism", in contrast with the perception of social media until yesterday, could further alienate users. And maybe accelerate the alternatives.
Which? You do. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is investing billions to transform his Metaverse actually. An evolution of current social networks, but also a way to return to re-proposing the advertising model which today, in its current forms, is dying. We'll see whether what he thought of comes to fruition (I doubt) or something that is more in synergy with augmented reality (his plan B and "my" plan A).
In any case, this paid social media model doesn't seem like the ultimate solution to me, but it could be the one that kills social media as we know it today, and makes us move on to the future.
