Technology
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
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Except not at all. This isn't what it costs them or what your data (targeted ad views) are worth. This is what the hope a few suckers will pay them (and to get you used to the idea of extremely expensive premium services), and otherwise at least 3 (but probably more) orders of magnitude more than they'd make if you watched the ads.
All these subscriptions have the same problem: they're incredibly pricey, offer almost nothing in return (they usually still track you), and if you had to pay them all you'd have like at least a $2k hole in your budget just for subscriptions.
It just doesn't make sense.
I'm not sure that you're not underestimating the cost for these sorts of services. The only long running sort of social media (BBS) I know of that is and has been for decades straight pay for access is The WELL. And they need to charge $15 a month.
https://www.well.com/join/pricing/
Of course, they're not anywhere near the scale of Facebook, but they are similar to a mid sized fediverse server from what I can tell. I honestly think the actual thing going on is most people find value in a free service, but don't find enough value to pay what it'd cost to make it a straightforward pay for service business.