I’m fairly new and don’t 100% understand it yet, but instances are run on servers that require money. Are we heading towards seeing ads or subscriptions to raise funds instead of relying on donations to cover overhead?
Especially with the influx of new users. Hardware upgrades are needed.
The Fediverse SHOULD allow monetization and they don’t yet. As per Mark Bayliss:
The problem here is that despite these large and escalating costs, a significant part of the fediverse is intrinsically hostile to anything other than charity or goodwill as a basis for running a server, due to hostility to capitalism as an abstract or just on a general point of principle regarding how web services should be funded. Any instance that runs advertisements to its users is likely to be blocked by any others purely on those grounds. Some instances have tried to introduce subscription fees for joining and have been blocked as a result. Ownership by a corporate entity or accepting funding from one is also likely to wind up with a block.
I’m not saying to commercialize the entirety of the Fediverse but if you want it to actually compete with Twitter and Reddit and Tumblr then you need to open it up further.
If you’re paying to provide a free server, and along comes another server owner who wants to peer with you. Only they’re charging their users for the same thing you’re giving away for free. Why wouldn’t you be a little bit miffed that they want to take your freely-given service and sell it to their users - because that’s what would be happening in that situation.
Monetising something that’s intended to be free is very, very difficult. Not impossible (see open source software and the businesses that grow around that), but it’s a lot harder when it’s a service.
That’s an interesting idea - have a special tier on one or more cloud providers paid for out of that source, or even a flat payment to any server provider based on number of users/activity or something like that?
I don’t think I would have joined my server if it required a fee to join but now that I’m on it and enjoying the experience and administration I’d gladly throw a buck or two a month their way for servers/maintenance.
Subreddits have 10 million subscribers, I haven’t seen a Lemmy group with more than a few thousand people. I don’t know about you but I’d like Lemmy to be as rich in content and discussion as Reddit was. Unless you like social media when it’s empty of users.
I could see a legitimate service being made out of something like an extra private lemmy, or a lemmy with additional features. Sort of like you’ll see these suites of services from Proton or Nord. Yeah, i can set up my own SMTP server, even encrypt my data, but it’s a lot easier to pay a few bucks to have a reliable service do it.
With federated services eventually becoming mainstream, i wouldn’t be surprised to see some companies offering packages that do things like provide additional privacy or larger amounts of storage.
Or like I’d imagine sustainable video hosts will have to monetize somehow just to pay for the storage space.
The fediverse is the coolest thing that could happened, freedom is what all people should seek for, creating their own spaces and not supporting corporations that only want to make money out of people’s lives, data, attention, mental health, etc …
It’s better to support the instance you are in with donations for sure.
Since I see the future (independently wealthy because of my gift I have won numerous lotteries and bets on horse racing), the Fediverse will be monetized in the year 2035,. So we have 12 good years ahead of us. Satisfied now?
I may be a minority. But I would gladly join a server that is paid and I get stability, but also a better stronger fight against the inevitable onslaught of shit - in return.
As long as a company can’t outright buy the whole network or something like that, I don’t think it could get fucked over in the same way that something like twitter or tumblr can.
And just to add to my previous reply - creation of Lemmy IS an act of capitalism! The author of Lemmy decided he didn’t like Reddit. So he made the most capitalist decision in their life - to create a competition. Lemmy is an actual flagship of capitalism and free market: when even people who dislike capitalism turn to capitalist tools to improve their lives.
I’m sorry, but Lemmy would not exist without capitalism. And you won’t be typing angry comments on your phone in the loo without it. You would, most likely, work in some mines right now and a slice of bread for lunch would be your best achievement in life.
Wow, news flash, you must participate in capitalism while living in a capitalist society. Though I fail to see how creating a free open-source distributed alternative could be construed as a “capitalist” move. Maybe look into the lemmy developers and their personal politics before assigning motivations to their actions.
Capitalism is relatively good, gives performance & frugality incentives. Unrestrained late-stage capitalism… not so much. Think of it like oxygen. At 21% you’re great (and need it to live), at 90%+ you spontaneously combust.
Honestly, we really don’t know. mastondon.world and lemmy.world are run by donations and that’s worked so far. Ruud and his folks have been pretty upfront about their finances.
The general temperament I’ve gotten is people around here are opposed to a corporate like monetization. I agree with that. Usually, at least what I’ve observed, is that when a service monetizes it becomes enshitified.
Open-source projects have always been sustainable by donations. Just look at Wikipedia; it’s been around for 22 years. Linux has been around for even longer.
Especially how Lemmy is right now, only a small portion of users would be needed to sustainable keep an instance running. Maybe from every 1.000 users, only 1 would be willing to pay 10$ a month and it should be more than enough.
Shit changes quickly when somebody thinks it would be a good way to start allowing video-uploads. It can get expensive fast with that amount of storage and bandwidth needed. I can see instances selling small "premium" subscriptions for videouploads. You could still host your own instance and get videouploads completely free for yourself, but if you don't wanna go that route, it would make sense (and would be totally fair)
I am fully open to people running everything collecting donations. Or even sponsorships are cool. Straight up monetization through making users pay for shit that doesn’t give anything in return is not cool. Let alone the fact that users make all the content to begin with
That’s very concerning! Sounds eerily similar to how Google killed XMPP back in the day. Honestly we probably shouldn’t allow any federation with them to stay safe.
There was a really good writeup I saw recently either here in Lemmy or on Hacker News somewhere, can’t seem to find it. In short though, Google adopted the decentralized standard, built it into Gmail so everyone uses their client, then eventually dropped support for talking with other XMPP clients.
It’s definitely possible to see scammy for-profit strategies pop up.
A more likely outcome is Big Tech coming in and fragmenting and dissolving ActivityPub servers like all the Lemmy servers. It will most likely be Big Tech incorporating the big tech websites/servers (Meta, Twitter, etc) into ActivityPub and then creating a closed Big Tech ActivityPub-like system where the artifically popular servers/instances (Meta, Twitter, etc.) migrate from FOSS ActivityPub to a closed for-profit system and essentially close off FOSS Lemmy. And most people wont understand FOSS ActivityPub vs Big Tech ActivityPub-like system thereby rendering OG Lemmy useless.
I prefer the idea of have separation; one whole server(s) for bots, one for for‐profit big tech, etc. Big Tech can play but won’t interfere with the heart of the AcivityPub.
A more likely outcome is Big Tech coming in and fragmenting and dissolving ActivityPub servers like all the Lemmy servers.
How? If, say, Facebook built a Lemmy-compatible instance, the worst they could do is eventually defederate it from other Lemmy instances, in which case we’re right back where we started.
Don’t know exactly, but it’s what happened with Google and XMPP.
Same thing can happen here.
But I’m imagining that Big Tech starts to post from their own server with content that is interesting to the the masses, rather than us nerd, then they market to all the other servers to get a bunch of sign ups (maybe with exclusive content or features, idk), then federate with their own other websites and servers using their own proprietary ActivityPub, then bam OG ActivityPub never takes off, withers and become even fewer nerds like me, and and a bunch of bots with little content.
this is why all these concepts fediverse, kbin, lemmy, activitypub etc etc needs to be publicly disclosed in an internationally accessible wiki so that no single entity can ever take control. the fact there is no public and clear disclosure means people out there are CONTROLLING these technologies and have BAD INTENTIONS. Disclose them NOW.
Slow down man. Activity Pub is just the system that lets Mastodon, Kbin, Lemmy, etc.communicate with each other. Pretty sure it's open source and not some evil scary monopolistic thing like Chromium that every uses begrudgingly. Not everyone on the internet is a bad actor, even Kbin itself is developed by one guy in an apartment working 24/7 to try to keep everything afloat.
Hey, I responded to some of your questions earlier. I don't know if you saw my most recent response to clarify a few more things.
I have to say, seeing you on this thread being somewhat militant has me thinking you might be concern trolling? I'm trying to help you out, but you're jumping straight to conclusions like Kbin is going to cause WW3.
there is nothing about being a troll if legitimate concerns are being raised. these concerns need to be raised now. it's good helldiver pointed some replies, but im guessing they will not be complete enough. people need to stop thinking the current state of information disclosure is enough. it isn't enough. look at the way crypto is disclosed. 50% of users have no clue wtf is going on. info needs to be disclosed in clear and concise and non-technobabble ways. github is horrible. it's full of geekspeak. we need to do better if we are to save humanity. we cannot wait till 500 years to solve hyperspace. we need to solve it now. that is why this is not being a troll. because we need to push ourselves. harder, faster, better than ever! look at fusion power. should have been solved 10 0 years ago. wtf is humanity doing? just scamming and cheating their way around. geezus. no wonder alien civs are not interested in talking to us. get real.
People gave you the basics and nobody stopping you from DYOD
You are not asking questions. This post is a stream of rhetorical questions that can be easily addressed with a search engine. With that being said, specifically, what are you asking?
Take a quick look through the last ~24 hours of my profile. I've put a fair amount of effort into answering their questions. While it's been entertaining for me, don't waste any more time with this person. They are not listening.
it's good helldiver pointed some replies, but im guessing they will not be complete enough.
Wait, are you saying that you didn't even read what I said? And you're assuming that what I wrote is just shit? Without even reading it? I gave you a pretty thorough response. Probably took me a solid ~15 minutes to type out and research and provide hyperlinks.
Troll probably isn't the right word to describe you. But it seems you've already made up your mind, and you want the Fediverse to be nefarious. Without listening to any actual discourse.
I would say that I feel you've wasted my time, but this has been pretty entertaining watching you come up with these crazy responses. Plus, I've learned a bit more about this platform, researching your questions. I'm going to go ahead and block you now.
much thanks!! i will have a look at them :P thank you fo taking my concerns seriously :p actually there are huge groups of us high tech high AI high IQ people on discord who all feel marginalised and hated (many many incels here), and having people like you explain and open up really helps stop us from being suicidal and hating the world. we're all struggling. pls help. much thanks!
I believe all the information is publicly available. The problem though, is as you say: it’s not easily accessible to us laymen. It’s all in very specific technological terms and codes. In the name of federation, accessibility, and transparency, there definitely needs to be a single database that describes all this, just like your wiki idea.
It’s definitely possible to see scammy for-profit strategies pop up.
There's not inherently bad about there being a profit motive. Servers are expensive, developers are expensive. There are costs to be paid, and if I am going to do something full time I'm going to have to pay my bills, too.
That said, there's definitely a line where it's taken too far and it loses what originally made it great cough cough.
I think otherwise, only because being profit driven always ends up hurting the consumer. Whether it be squeezing out every penny from us and them not caring about leaving us destitute, to actively obliterating the environment, to stealing our data because “hey, you have nothing to hide right? Also, we’ll only use it for marketing ;) . Don’t ask why it’s so expensive to sell.”
It's up to you as a consumer to make those choices.
But would you do your job if it didn't pay you and you couldn't pay your rent? If I decided to really put effort into running an instance, developing a nice frontend, paying for the servers, should I not be able to pay my rent?
What amount of money is acceptable for me to have to spend, since it's immoral for me to try to get any of it back?
They won't fragment it. They'll absorb its content while contributing as little as possible to it. Here's how it will happen.
They'll extend the feature set in a way that makes their instance more desirable to use. They'll have boosts, but they'll also have private systems to engage with like Reddit karma or Slashdot-style voting (funny, informative, insightful, etc). Anything that engages your stupid lizard brain to make the chemicals, and even better if those systems just aren't supported by ActivityPub because they have plausible deniability for why these features only work on their thing.
Having created The Nicest Fediverse Server Ever that, so far, appears to be playing by all the rules, they'll begin to dominate. A few voices will protest, but most will say "no, this seems to all be above board!" And because that will be true at the time, our Prophets Cassandra will be largely ignored. We'll stay at this point until The Nicest Fediverse Server Ever has a majority of Fediverse users registered there and using it as their primary portal to the Fediverse. This is the most likely point to introduce advertising, when user trust is high and they can claim that they need to support the business of hosting all this. If they offer subscriptions, they won't be necessary to access the site yet.
After capturing a critical mass of users, they'll become covertly, then overtly, hostile toward other federated servers. They'll allow you to participate in a thread from a federated server and dutifully share your post so you can enjoy getting replies, but they'll have private threads too, until the private ones outnumber the federated ones. They'll add more features that are either incompatible with ActivityPub or simply not shared with it, like a privately owned Imgur that only works with their site, or choosing to encrypt some part of user communication so it's not practical to interoperate. They'll defederate from some servers because THINK OF THE CHILDREN, some because they're poorly managed, and some, in time, for not being Advertiser-Friendly. The ads now go fully rancid, the gloves come off, and would you look at that: your data HAS been sold to the highest bidder all this time.
Now fully enshittified, they'll declare that the majority of their users are no longer interested in federation and that doing so is an expense they don't need. They will defederate entirely, keep all the users, and kill everything that came before it.
and this is why we must FIGHT BACK!!!! I recommend the best way is to make the entire messaging system, twitter included, government owned and regulated. Who pays for it? The top 10% of all wealth and income earners in each country. BAM!!! Simple and QED.
We can privatise it again later, when the rules and environment for regulation are more settled.
Think of the Fediverse much more like Wikipedia than anything else. It is run in donations and volunteers. It is not for profit and for the benefit of all people.
I mean, it is possible that instance admins will be able to show advertising on ones instance, but you will be able to find dotation based, ad-free instance instead. Lemmy as a whole won’t be monetized, only a particular instance. But it’s only my guess
IMO whatever comes next needs to be decentralized from the get go, like a torrent system where the network sort of automatically scales with the user count. The fediverse is pretty cool right now but it’s bound to get shitty real soon as people get tired of fronting the costs purely out of goodwill. Either the cost need to be spread around such that the individuals paying it really don’t mind, or there needs to be an incentive to pay / way to monetize that is aligned with the common goal of a decentralized social network. Otherwise we’ll end up with either a network of insignificant size (arguably what this is now) or a monetized shit hole like what Reddit has become
I keep thinking about how a system like that could work but I’m sure someone smarter than me has already figured out that it can’t
Even with these servers being paid for that’s kind of rough. It’s very hard to decentralize something reliable with solid data retention without paying.
well it kind of works for piracy, but that’s because there are some very based people out there who take a lot of pride in seeding content that they want to keep available. Sort of like how the fediverse currently rests upon the shoulders of a few dedicated people who work hard to keep their instances alive under the onslaught of reddit refugees. I’d much rather have a system that doesn’t depend on people’s goodwill to survive though
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