But have you considered paying $8 a month to use features that used to be free and also associate yourself with far right?

Wonder how much of it is because of Threads and how much of it is from making the site inaccessible without accounts and the rate limit.

It is the people that make a social network great.

You're right. I say this every time these conversations come up. It's the people that hold the power. Imagine how quickly things would change if everyone stopped using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, WhatsApp, Telegram, Snapchat, etc. overnight. From billions/millions to users, to zero. Can you imagine how quickly the companies would change/adjust/pivot/react?

Social media company’s don’t understand what makes a Social network great.

Disagree. They know. It's just that they're trapped in an unethical business model that will never allow them to make it great. This is because the platform's interests are constantly at war with the user's interests. This was a critical mistake in the earlier days of the internet.

Google itself identified this in the early days in a paper that they wrote. They originally just wanted to organize the internet. But with an advertising revenue model, the interests of the advertisers was ultimately gonna be more important.

Call it "enshittification": Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

I don't know if it's just me, but I'm barely using reddit/twitter and now I spend most of my online time on Lemmy/Mastodon.

Well look at me, I'm part of the problem.