As positive social networking disappears, the market demand for one you can pay for with no ads increases. Pricing would be difficult but every year the average consumer learns more and more about how much "free" costs.
I agree a non-profit approach might be the only option to avoid the same long term problems we've seen time and again.
Generally, trying to directly convert a free service to a subscription service can be much harder than starting out as a subscription service. Just look at all the resentful conspiracies about Facebook planning to charge money that would go viral back in the day.
Users don't like a contract radically changing from under them, and shifting from free to paid is breaking a contract in an immediately understandable way.
No one was forced to buy the plan nor was the free Facebook going to go away. You just would have had the option to pay to not have targeted ads. And that was vetoed by the EU, the very thing many here claim they'd like to do.
I misunderstood your comment.
That case was about forcing users to choose between personalized ads or a paid subscription. I can understand why the EU would reject that.
A case like that is outside of the scope of my argument. My proposal is a site that offers subscriptions with no free ad supported option at all, which the EU wouldn't have an issue with.
> the market demand for one you can pay for with no ads increases
Didn't Meta try to offer this in the EU and they said no you have to let people use the free one without targeting any ads to them