The Inevitable Coming Of Monetization
Say what you will about Bluesky thus far, but I quite like it and it brings back those Old Twitter memories that faded with time as Twitter became more and more enshittified over time, finally peaking with Elon's takeover of the platform.
Unfortunately, I think most of us know that no good thing lasts forever, and the ad-free Bluesky feed at some point will start to feature ads of some sort. The best we could hope for would be something akin to the way Daring Fireball did ads: Visible, but out of the way, not intrusive at all. But this is the 2020s. We know it won't be that simple.
I know Bluesky have said they have monetization ideas on the table, but here's what I'd like to see/some lines I want to define whenever the time does come:
Subscriptions should be fairly priced and not be compromised: No "you'll see less ads". If I'm paying you money, there needs to be NO ads. The "monthly cost plus ads" is a scam perpetuated by the streaming services and sadly rather than getting punished for them they saw massive profits, so everyone wants to jump on that bandwagon. You're better than that, Bluesky.
As for fairly priced, the cost should be at most--for normal users who just want ad free--no more than $10. Preferably less.
Maybe a little congratulatory badge on their profile or something but critical functionality should not and never be locked behind this subscription like Twitter did.
Monetization does not come at the cost of the moderation tools Bluesky has. Blocklists/labeling services/so on and so forth. These are some of the most powerful tools Bluesky has going for it, don't cripple them in the name of making money.
Monetization does not come in the form of a forced algorithm. Bluesky has algorithmic feeds, but you have to specifically seek them out and use them, your timeline defaults to chronological and stays there unless you specify otherwise. For the love of all that is holy, do not pull a Meta and make it so algorithmic feeds are the only apparent option and you have to crawl on broken glass to get to the chronological feeds.
Advertiser blocking must be allowed. One of my main issues with TikTok for example is that I constantly get ads for religious garbage and I'm about as far from religious as you can be. Yet no matter how many times I say that no, this advertising does NOT apply to me, it keeps coming up. Let me block them from ever appearing in my feed again. I don't care if the advertiser really, really, mega wants to get in front of my eyeballs in particular.
Ads must be clearly defined, and also not obnoxious: No autoplaying video with sound, ads must be clearly labeled (unlike Twitter where they try to look like real posts as much as they can), and cannot be engineered in such a way that would fool a user into tapping on them.
This list kinda also serves as a nice line in the sand that if crossed will likely mean the return to Mastodon for myself. Really, I really define the line as "pre-Elon Twitter". I know advertising is probably going to show up. I know the chuds and fash are going to show up (and already have). So long as Bluesky continues to give me the tools to make sure I never know of these people existing, I'm okay with it. But the minute they begin crippling our ability to lock those people out is when I begin looking to go back to Mastodon.
The only thing that could be added to help things in this regard is private accounts. That'd be nice.