Exploring the World of Social Media Minus the Ads

Social Media AdvertisingPhoto bySutthiphong / Adobe Stock

Elon Muskmade more headlines than usual recently when he sat down for an interview with theNew York Times’s Andew Ross Sorkin andtold him(in addition to other things), that“if somebody’s going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself.”

ThisF-bombheard around the corporate world ignited numerous headlines in response to Musk’s statements, ranging from “Elon Musk Just Told Advertisers, ‘Go Fuck Yourself,” to “Elon Musk’s ‘Attitude’ Has Contributed to an Advertiser Exodus from X.”

But what if, in spite of himself, Musk has given us all permission to consider different ways to move forward with social media?What if we could have social media in a different way…without all those advertisers that Musk is so busy alienating?

It Wasn’t Always This Way

A number of social media histories and timelines exist, but most agree on thegeneral evolutionof the first “social media” sites and tools, includingSix Degrees, which launched in 1997, and Friendster, which began in 2001.Likewise, the earliest days of the twenty-first century also witnessed a huge burst in personal online blogging, facilitated by such services as LiveJournal (1999) and Blogger (1999).

Although digital adshave been around since 1994,Facebook only started selling advertising in 2006 (with YouTube quickly following, in 2007).Although Twitter launched in 2006, it didn’t allowadvertising until 2010.In a neat twist of irony, one of the first brands to work with Twitter’s early “Promoted Trend” style of advertising was Disney/Pixar, when announcing the opening of the movieToy Story 3(ironic because Disney’s CEO Bob Iger is one of the CEOs whose advertising Muskhas been most adversarialabout).

Does anybody even remember when there was a different way these platforms could operate?

Even if nobody remembers what advertising-free media looked like on other social media platforms, one platform we’re all obviously familiar with is staring us in the face with some answers.

This Medium article that you just clicked on?That shows up in anuncluttered space free of advertisements.This is because it follows a “freemium model” — meaning that it charges its users and readers a monthly or annualsubscription chargefor full access.Currently that charge is $5 per month or $50 per year, although Medium just announced a new tier of membership called “Friend of Medium.”

Many writers have suggested that a similar model could work for Twitter (and other social media services as well).When pointing out that advertising revenue depends heavily upon the number of user clicks and “engagement,” which prioritizes particularly polarizing or controversial content,Lucy Luo suggests thatTwitter could instead make money by charging its users with the most followers some sort of access fee.

Although Twitter tried some version of this model with its “Twitter Blue” service, it became associated with Twitter (or X’s) controversial new owner, when he took over in 2022.

Are there any options besides advertising or charging subscription fees?

In 2022, when Musk first took over Twitter, a number of articles appeared suggesting alternative ways for the platform to make money.In one, a business professor and his MBA students floated several ideas in addition to trimming company costs and charging subscription fees.These ideas includedpartnering with other more traditional companies to source and release news, as well asusing AI to generate affiliate links to any services or products mentioned.

These Questions Keep Leading to the Same Answers

Another waythat social media companiescommonly make revenue is byselling personal dataabout their users to other companies and advertisers.In fact, this works hand in hand with advertising revenue, as social media companies are often able to promise extremely personal information about their users to companies, which then specifically target those users with ever-more personalized ads.

This type of revenue stream can also lead to problems, like a lack of privacy for social media users,and a media stream that insidiously gives each individual more of what they want, regardless of whether or not such personalized “echo chamber” information is good for them.

Straight advertising revenue and also revenue from selling users’ personaldata and preferences both lead to some questionable social media environments.But both are heavily entrenched in our systems as we know them.

As users of social media, some of the responsibility for this system rests on our shoulders.Our desire for entirely free-of-charge platforms has helped lead, arguably, to a state of affairs where we are actually shocked when a business owner takes the (unheard of) step of telling advertisers he doesn’t care what they think.

You may or may not be a fan of Elon Musk.Buthe might be telling the truth, even if he’s doing it with profanity.We may simply have to find different ways to finance these online tools we all use.Paying for them on a regular basis is one way, and maybe we should get back into that habit.There might be other ways, if we encourage such companies to be more creative when it comes to funding.

Do you have any ideas for how social media could lessen its reliance on advertising?