Social networks are ceasing to earn what they earned and that is why they have lost half of their stock market price from highs. The share of Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, with Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, reached 372 dollars and yesterday it did not reach half: 172. The salaries of its managers and technicians are linked to that price, so they suffer cuts and more than 11,000 laid off employees. Google has also seen its share fall by 38% and has laid off another 12,000 workers. And Elon Musk kicked out another 7,500 by buying Twitter.
It is the beginning of the end of the total free in the network. Only a couple of years ago it seemed that, as the marginal cost of distributing digital content tended to zero, the business would always be giving it to us for free in exchange for our data to place personalized advertising and sell us everything.
It is now clear that this model is no longer profitable. For this reason, Meta charges from today 14 euros (4.99) per month in Australia for Meta Verified, “extra security guarantee that prevents impersonation and gives you free supplementary services” on Facebook and Instagram. WhatsApp will soon follow (whoever writes has already suffered undesirable intrusions in his), until the “free for data” becomes a fee in exchange for service. Musk tried Twitter Blue for $8 a month before hackers boycotted it; and Snapchat with its Plus, for $3.99.
And this journalist who is happy that what free newspapers have already demonstrated is being repeated online: that they are unfeasible and the only possibility of providing valuable content to citizens – without depending on a government that biases them in their favor and charges them obligatorily with taxes – is to give them only to whoever wants to pay them. The competition to post the best benefits everyone and our democratic health to begin with.
There is still a long way to go before endowing the digital kiosk with the weighting and quality of the best days of street vendors. And we will also have the contributions of citizens in networks and without trolls; but the obvious is already imposed (as the Anglo-Saxons would say): “There are no free lunches and no newspapers that are worth reading.”