And this right here is the disease’s expression: “How do we make money off of …”
Get out of the capitalist “your bank balance is your worth” mindset and just … you know … enjoy something for enjoyment’s sake without looking for some way to grift.
Money is the way society allocates resources. All this content is going to need resources. Server hosting, data storage, software development. I’ve already seen some server andmins begin to ask for donations to keep it all running. Is that how we’re going to run this? Is it going to be like Wikipedia, begging for money all the time? Maybe it’ll be like NPR and every server will have quarterly membership drives. I’m down for a lemmy.world totebag. But you can’t enjoy something and then just expect somebody else to pick up the tab. At least not all the time.
You are conflating “making money off of” and “paying for”. The mindset is very different.
“How do I pay for my home?” vs. “How do I make money off of my home?” if you want a really stark version of the contrast.
Yes, there are expenses involved in running a fediverse instance of any kind. No, the person providing it shouldn’t be forced to foot the bill alone (or at all, if possible!). But there is a huge gulf between “let’s get the money to pay for this” and “let’s use this to make money”. And if you can’t see the difference between them? Sorry to inform you that you’ve been diagnosed with terminal, late-stage capitalism.
Hoping for economics to stop mattering so you don’t have to work any more is like hoping for gravity to stop mattering so you can fly. I’ve been aroun man. I was there in the ICQ days. I’ve seen this before. You either figure out how to monetize or watch it fail. Either it will be come irrelevant, or somebody will figure out how to make money off it in ways you’re not going to like. Did you read the article?
