Post

hailey
@hailey.at

the sad reality of 2025 is that a large swath of folks have been driven to believe the only value they may have to offer to the internet is to be the product of a company. that needs to change. even folks who say they don’t want to be the product cannot fathom not being the product…

46 reposts353 likes

hailey
@hailey.at

this obviously makes sense, years and years and years of corporations progressively getting worse about making people the product certainly starts to make you think it’s just inevitable. but it can change, and i am very excited to see that happen.

Markus Pössel
@mpoessel.de

I remember in the early days a number of users (myself included) encouraged Bluesky to introduce a payment option. I'd have been happy to pay a fixed amount of my own choosing, not for extra services/privileges, but to help keep things running. Being supporter instead of product. Nothing came of it.

James Swift
@swift.casa

There is a culture of "free" (as in beer) that has dominated the Internet since the late 90s when corporations figured out how to monetise that and use it as barrier to entry for any challengers. This has become so pervasive that ...

James Swift
@swift.casa

not only do people demand services to be free but games, tool, art, and in our case audio plugins. We are just two people doing, imho, good things and people complain when a complex work costs a couple of drinks. Heck, we get complaints that some of our actually free things don't do enough 😅 Ideas?

hailey
@hailey.at

the unfortunate reality of this is that we simply have a wide array of shifting priorities and getting to that work just hasn’t quite yet made sense. we got close, and have a lot of the work ready to go. just shifting priorities…

Miky
@mikysp.bsky.social

Despite the turbulent times I know your team can do it, Hailey. Looking forward to the idea of people re-discovering what it means to have your own control, no more rage-bait slop...

competentposter
@competentposter.bsky.social

I miss ~2010 when the internet was just people who wanted to be here. I see so many people who act like their computer/phone is trying to kill them, or "the algorithm" is trying to destroy their brain. Do something else! Where did this victim complex come from! I love being here that's why I'm here!

sof
@mofu.run

this is one of the things that shocked me the most from all these discussions, like, it's scary how people really can't imagine things being in any other way

Bobhisattva
@doctorsyrup.bsky.social

Framing it as "they can't fathom anything else..." is once again deflecting from the main point and shows how you think of your users - as lesser little babies who can't think for themselves like you big smart STEM people can. You clearly have zero respect for the people who make the community.