Every competitive game has a ranking system. I do not see any issue playing and trying to improve, just reduce your expectations.

A lot of 20 year olds are trash in a lot of competitive games

I do agree that it is possible to be motivated by other things than money, but in todays society you need income to survive.

If we had other systems to deligate money to everyone I agree that we might not need to do things for money.

I love services that are free, and driven by communities that are motivated by what they are doing. But these services also need some kind of income today. Wikipedia is dependent on donations, mosts blogs have sponsors, ads or is used to further a career.

I have no issues with this, I will glady donate to Wikipedia, and I understand why blogs might have ads or sponsors in them. But if you enjoy a service it is kinda wierd to not want to give anything back to the creator.

I understand google is fucked, but we cant just sit back and not understand why a free version of youtube will not exist. Maybe youtube should just die, but why are we complaining about a comany taking payment for a service? Fuck google, fuck facebook, but don’t complain that they want payment for huge expensive services that basically could not survive without any income.

I guess they don’t have to profit, but I believe they do have to cover their expenses (salary, hosting, etc). This is needed with capatalism or any other model (yes I know they have huge profits sadly)

I do agree that the market is failing, where we have way to little competition. Or that maybe a alternative to capatilism would solve the issue.

But in every thread here I feel like most people just expect to use everything on the internet for free, which is absurd to me. Why would anyone host a service like youtube if you didnt get any income from the users? The server costs alone must be huge.

Why would people write articles if they do not get any money from it?

This might be an unpopular and ignorant take.

Services like Reddit, Twitter and Youtube needs to make money somehow. They provide a service that the users enjoy, and it is fair that they want componsation for those services. Aslong as they are upfront with how and what you are paying with I think it is fine, and the user can themself choose not to use the service if they feel like the payment is too high.

It seems like we are whining about not being able to watch quality content for free. Even Lemmy needs donations or kind souls to keep running.

The DRM and Chrome changes might be worse… But in the end it is the same base argument, we need more competition to reduce the price or stop using services we don’t like / want to pay for.