There are myriad ways that networks produce value. One immediate one is attention — if you think the ability to direct attention does not have value, I suggest you try selling anything to anyone without it.
I already mentioned advertising and how it's the only real economic activity enabled by social networks. Unless Twitter enables some kind of payment processing and gives the participants the ability to actually exchange money for goods and services Twitter will continue to be an economic loss leader. Most people on social networks do not contribute to the real economy in any meaningful way.
Same logic applies to bluesky networks and servers.
I would maybe phrase it differently but I guess I don’t disagree: social networks should be publicly-owned and exist for the public good.
The reason the model runs the way it does and collapses is because we inherently understand that most communication should not be economically restricted. We don’t have a good social network because capitalism isn’t a good way to create them.
