Marc EdwardsNov 1

“When we made Affinity free, some people assumed there had to be a catch. Let me be absolutely clear. There is no catch.”

I do not think this comment will age well. You don’t spend USD$1 billion on something just to give it away. It’s very likely the plan is a freemium model, because that’s what the rest of Canva is. That means gating features behind a subscription tier. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9YR9KeCJDY

How is Affinity now free?

YouTube
Show threadCM Harrington

@marcedwards their doing/gonna do a few things… seems now you need a canva login to use it, and everything becomes input into their AI model. The future will also probably be multi-tier sub walls like figma where useful features will be only available at higher paid tiers rather than their base paid tier.

This allows them to inflate their canva user numbers/MAU, etc.

Nov 1 at 4:11amWeb
Show threadMarc EdwardsNov 1
@octothorpe Yep, yep, and yep. So much of this seems obvious? And as we know from other companies, they’ll be under a lot of pressure to get every last cent from their customers post-IPO.
Show threadCM HarringtonNov 1

@marcedwards Yuuuuup. And folks are all ‘this is great!’ MF, you are in the year 2025. How do you NOT know how ‘free’ works outside of OSS?!

It’s like they’ve learned NOTHING.

Show threadMarc EdwardsNov 1
@octothorpe 😂 I guess some people need to be burned a few more times by “free” VC funded services.
Show threadBartNov 1
@marcedwards @octothorpe The terms and conditions of the EULA are just a bunch of catches in a trench coat.
Show threadMarc EdwardsNov 1
@bartreardon @octothorpe Yep. I think “right now, strategically it suits us to give this away for free, but we will probably change our minds” would be the most honest message.
Show threadstephen ryner jr. 🦉Nov 1
@octothorpe @marcedwards this time, it will be different!
Show threadCM HarringtonNov 1
@nuthatch @marcedwards ::charlie brown football dot gif::
Show threadJonathan HendryNov 1

@octothorpe @marcedwards

Hah, my talentless amateur doodlings are worthless to them. I'm still coming out ahead.

It'll be a while before it gets intolerably enshittified, and in the meantime I'll have some tools I didn't previously have. But what I do with them will be rubbish with no commercial or emotional value.

Show threadTuomas Hämäläinen 🇺🇦Nov 1

@octothorpe @marcedwards The stuff you upload to the Canva account can supposedly be used to train the AI, but they’re being pretty explicit that nothing you do locally in Affinity will/can be used for that… not saying that can’t change in the future, but we *should* be able to take their word for it at least in the here and now.

https://mastodon.social/@tuomas_h/115473060020911565

Show threadMarc EdwardsNov 1
@tuomas_h I believe what they’re saying is true for now. But also, they’re a company worth $60 billion with lots of VC funding, and about to IPO. Post-IPO Wall Street will expect them to have continuous growth, and the second they need to, they’ll backflip on these policies. +@octothorpe
Show threadTuomas Hämäläinen 🇺🇦Nov 1

@marcedwards @octothorpe Totally agree with you and it'll be interesting (terrifying) to watch this space. I desperately want them to do right by Affinity and their users but indeed, we've seen this movie before.

My only beef in this entire larger discussion has been with folk saying this slurping up of all your Affinity content for training models is happening *right now*, when it isn't 🙂

Show threadMarc EdwardsNov 1
@tuomas_h Yeah, that’s fair and I believe them. +@octothorpe
Show threadMarc EdwardsNov 1
@tuomas_h We’ve all watched this movie before! +@octothorpe