beige.party is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
A home to friendly weirdos. The Grey Gardens of the Fediverse (but beige). Occasionally graphically cacographic. Definitely probably not a cult (though you'll never be 100% sure). Beige-bless 🙏

Server stats:

447
active users

Possibly a Dog

And, they just announced subscriptions. Here comes the rent!

bsky.app/profile/bsky.app/post (direct link to the sub subskeet) has a bunch of cheerleaders replying “take my money”, as if that will forestall the inevitable degradation of service, as if they weren’t secretly planning this business model shift all along, as if the VCs will just *disappear* if enough people pay $5 per month

that $15M VC investment is not a *loan*, it's a 100-to-1 *bet* on getting out with $1.5B, and they will squeeze and cheat and do whatever it takes to win that bet

it’s stage 2: charge rent for full functionality, then add ads to the free tier

(first self-promos, then "offers" (demands) to buy subs, then “partners” (advertisers) including crypto scams from their new co-owners, and influencer-hustling pickaxe salesmen (the real profiteers of the gold rush))

then they'll add ads to the paid tiers too

that’s stage 3, right @pluralistic ? it’s hard to keep the stages straight since they’re all happening so quickly these days)

Bluesky Social · Bluesky (@bsky.app)We will begin developing a subscription model for features like higher quality video or profile customizations like colors and avatar frames. Bluesky will always be free to use — we believe that information and conversation should be easily accessible. (We won’t uprank paid accounts.) https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-24-2024-series-a