Comment by abdullahkhalids
1 year ago
Think of Discord. Anyone can create and participate in a discord server. There are no ads. People with money pay for the premium features and perks and that is how the company makes money [1].
Not every product category is amenable to such business models but many are.
[1] To be fair, Discord likely sells user data to advertisers to make additional money.
Discord has ads, though they are relatively rare and not embedded in chat. They are called "Quests" and you can disable them in the settings.