Gabe Newell, the founder of Valve (Steam) had this to say

“Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem”

So many people are willing to pay if it’s a good experience. But if the experience sucks, people with money will find a better service, which in many cases ends up being free. If I wanted to have ads dumped everywhere while I watch videos, there are services that offer that “experience” for free.

That’s a good way to think about it, actually. Thanks for sharing

It does make establishing a critical mass of comments to make a good discussion difficult. I’ve had it once or twice where I discovered a post in one community commented and didn’t get any replies, only to discover some other discussion on the same content happened elsewhere on the fediverse that I wasn’t subscribed to.