I'd happily pay $100/year for Bluesky as it exists now even if the option to pay was voluntary and added no extra features.

Maybe a light blue "bsky supporter" checkmark or something like that, but I don't think I'm alone in that idea of "you have created something of value to me, I am willing to contribute to help keep you doing that"

fundamentally the question all these people are responding to is "can this website thrive at mass scale or must it remain niche?" i think that virtually all of us — critics and defenders — believe the latter to be self-evidently true; the only difference is whether we see that as a good thing!

I have my doubts about the ability to remain a going concern, because the unit economics are so whack; but at the same time, all these platforms are, fundamentally, ephemera.

the unit economics of *everything on the internet other than e-commerce* are pretty fundamentally awful.

Yep! It’s a big part of why people shouldn’t get emotionally attached to these services.

not me – i'm only getting emotionally attached to the things i liked when i was 12

(the obvious follow-on Q is, "how can this place possibly sustain itself once its VC backers realize the obvious truth that it will never make money?" would it be possible to sustain it through App.Net-style subscriptions? i'm generally skeptical about subscription-based social media—but we'll see!)

Yeah, it definitely works for me, although I wish Bluesky (the whole @atproto.com network actually) was bigger and financially sustainable. That being said I think the weak version of "working" people think of is: is constantly growing. The strong version is: it has completely replaced Twitter.