Those alternatives are old tech that has way more limitations than a neural implant.
Just because there is old tech that SORT OF does this, doesn’t mean it can’t be improved. That’s the same attitude behind “not needing more than 4mb of RAM” back in the day. You can’t stop progress all because YOU are fine with the current state of the tech.
Nobody has to pay for anything Lemmy or ActivityPub related because its FOSS.
That means Free Open Source Software.
As in, you can get and use the source code yourself without paying a single cent.