Speaking of Pillowfort, they're still a very new website, and from what I've read, they hope to make registration free in the future. And even then, it feels like people are overreacting.
They’re not even “new”. Like, really. People don’t seem to understand what it actually means to be “in beta”, let alone closed beta. They’re pre-new.
I get that there are a lot of services that call themselves beta and are more stable/established/better funded, but it still means you’re going to be in for a bumpy ride and that the service is being made available “as-is” because it’s still in active development.
To clarify, Pillowfort intends to make registration free when they go into open beta, and to fund the site via 1) optional paid memberships for additional, non-essential features, and 2) an opt-in ad program. Personally, I’m wary of the latter, but I understand the desire of having that additional source of revenue when they’re just starting out, and it’s my hope that with enough support via paid members, they won’t need to resort to it after all.
People on this site seem to understand the value of supporting artists, crafters, writers, etc for the time and effort they put into their work, yet have come to expect online services to be free.
As far as I know, the Pillowfort “team” only has two full-time developers working on the site. Never minding the sky-high server/bandwidth expenses of running a website with thousands of users– these are people who are working on this project in place of a more reliable job at an established agency or company. Does their time and effort have no value?
Programmers are in demand. They’re well-paid positions. If they wanted to make easy money, building their own social media platform from scratch and politely asking users to maybe pay five freaking dollars is about as far from “easy money” as they could get.
The notion that it’s “shady” and “capitalistic” of them to want their project to be able to break even is absolutely fucking ridiculous.
As far as their for-profit status goes, I can hardly blame them. The amount of accountability required to run a non-profit involves a lot of work and comes with a lot of legal red tape. I wouldn’t expect a project this early in its infancy to have the resources to handle that.
And let’s be real: AO3 is a non-profit that runs on a shoestring budget and has all their expense/revenue info publicly available– and yet there are still people who “”“don’t trust why they need that much money”“”
This isn’t a matter of people genuinely being concerned about where their money goes. The majority of them just don’t acknowledge the value of the service they’re being provided and are looking for any excuse not to pay for it.
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