geotechland

This video explains it well: Basically, its greed and the fact that franchises are safer bets. And of course many people still watch them. https://youtu.be/p4GERuvdhYI

yep as much as I dislike Elon's politics, this is actually a good business move.

Though I doubt this will impact the ads/analytics side of things.

So cool i kind of want to get one but maybe i'll wait for the next generation :D

Yeah they can't keep raising the prices. Especially when they now have competition. Altho the newcomers are pricing their services competitively to steal marketshare. If they were in the same position netflix is in now, they'd likely do the same.

This is Dystopian o.o

This is a good question I also have. I think we do need to explore some monetization options. As an example, ads on youtube allowed for independent media to thrive. It was good.

But youtube, or alphabet as a publicly traded company, wants more money than just to pay the creators. They gotta increase profit to please the shareholders so we are seeing more ads.

I think we should normalize paying a subscription fee for content so that we don't pay with it with our data. But it becomes a chicken and egg problem. Unless a creator or website is huge, not many ppl will subscribe for it initially. So what do creators or small websites do? Maybe there is room for ethical ads if we cant get enough users to pay or donate.

Happy to hear this news too.

Do you think there will be any downsides to having an alternative payment system?

Element is good but the encryption aspect of it needs to be simplified especially for casual users.

I wish it were ARM based. What other SoC will they use? A custom AMD?