Would people pay for an ad-free social network?

I don't pay for X or any other social network.

Perhaps donations could work instead?

I think subscriptions could work, people pay not to have ads in other media they consume, ive built a prototype platform, that allows users to curate their life in it, part social network, part journal, part support. i want to also build in safety features for children so parents feel safe letting their children online. would love some feedback on the premise.

I can however see this for niches and small groups. Something more akin to old school bulletin board forums. In a sense Metafilter works a bit that way already.

If those user types haven’t moved en masse off twitter to <insert some replacement> then what would compel people to move, and pay for something they don’t pay for with money?

If by existing relationships you mean only like 2 degrees of separation then its implied that there is no global posting, no viral capability and probably no businesses or politicians on it (all amazing features I would love). Basically a family and friends network. A huge difficulty would be how to price it, one time fee for a family tree? The largest costs are going to be bandwidth and storage. If you go no video/images then what pulls people in?

Company structure might be key too. If it’s built as employee owned and operated with a small profit goal, it might take longer to grow but odds are enshitification or corrupt management can be avoided.

- What is the business model? Subscriptions will not pay for initial infrastructure investment.

I personally left Twitter and paid for app.net. Unfortunately, not enough other people followed my example, and app.net was eventually shut down.

In my opinion, it's not enough to offer an alternative to the existing big social networks. The only way an alternative succeeds is if people have a strong reason to leave their existing big social networks. In 2012 I personally felt strongly about switching, because Twitter eliminated RSS support, but most other people didn't feel as strongly about it. Ten years later, though, many more people had a strong reason to leave Twitter, because they were repulsed by Elon Musk and his acquisition of the platform.

Mastodon and Bluesky are not technically superior to app.net. IMO they're inferior. But they're having more success now because people have a reason to leave Twitter. It's not really a choice between platforms: people aren't choosing Mastodon over Twitter/X or Bluesky over Twitter/X. Rather, they're simply choosing to leave Twitter/X, and when they've already made that choice to leave, they start looking for an alternative.

Semi-private social apps that are invite only (like a company's Slack channels) or require discovery (like a game's Discord) have made lots of money and neither of those companies uses ads.

Good luck!

I think a great example of a part of a social network that would be good is event organizing. Partiful I believe is attempting to make money in that particular space by offering paid super-user features for higher-volume party promoters and the like.