This guy clearly hasn't been paying attention to anything that's happening, did he? The idea that if we paid for the platform, the platform wouldn't have any incentive to glue us to it and to try and make us addicted to it is ridiculous. Of course they would do it. Because they would want to make sure you get that dopamine hit. To make sure you keep paying.
And it would just be like the streaming services wars. Eventually, the user base will stabilize, and then companies won't get the growth they look for, so they will start fucking over their users because that's what always happens. They will introduce tiers, and what used to be just one tiers will become two or three, and one will be ad supported, and basic features will be stripped away from the main tiers.... we know how this goes.
And to me the worst part is, social media, whether we want it or not, has become a very important part of our lives. And for all of it's wrong, it also has some very strong positives, notably helping people find community and express themselves. And you, Andrew, want to paywall all of this, make it accessible by a privileged few... The result would be an internet that's even more white, even more straight, even more cis...
Fuck that. The solution is to not let these spaces in the hands of corporations. These spaces should be owned by the people who live on it. Not some executives asshole trying to squeeze every penny out of them.
The problem is capitalism. Maybe it's time we stop putting band-aids fix on every problem it causes. We've tried to fix it time and time again. Maybe it's time to root out the problem.