I read this as about general social media, not LLMs.

LLMs, I agree the at-home hardware is pricey and not super competitive right now. Plenty of frontier models that are kept from the public, with VC-discounted rates because the IPO hasn’t dropped yet. (If you’re expecting a market crash, this is going to get much better fairly soon. In the mean-time, subscriptions are probably more cost effective than just buying the hardware at old prices would have been.)