Why Post.News over Mastodon and CounterSocial? I'm on all three--for the moment--but one thing that sticks out is the fact that Post has venture capital behind it, while the others don't.
What this means in practice is that Mastodon and CounterSocial will always be what they are now, but Post has a chance to really take off. Will it? That is the big question.
If I were in charge of CounterSocial, I would be looking for funding, BTW. The user-donor/subscription model just doesn't seem a winner to me.
If the NYT and other outlets can't make it at scale with model where users pay--and scale is the big issue--then social media sites won't succeed either. Which brings me to my point: With CounterSocial, what you see now is what it will always be without proper funding. If you are happy with that, then good for you.
Historically, models where the users pay have never worked in media. Newspapers and magazines always made the lion's share of their profits from ads, as did TV. User funded TV like the BBC has always lost money.
@John_Scotus
In the newspaper model, the subscriptions pay for the physical paper and circulation, and the advertisements pay for the content, roughly speaking. The salaries of reporters, editors, advertising staff, etc plus syndicated content is the vast majority of the cost.
We provide our own content. So we only have to pay for the hosting costs and salaries for the few people managing it (currently only one guy).