It probably goes against the philosophy or whatever of FOSS or Lemmy itself, but why not be a little evil so that you can actually sustain yourself? Donations can bring us far, but small non-intrusive ads can be a bliss in the skies for the people actually hosting the instance. Especially if there are millions of users uploading thousands of images and videos. This is extremely expensive.
Is running ads really that taboo?
EDIT: some people seem not to get the point of “millions of users”, which presumably includes non-techies that do not use adblockers. I mean that without ads (or mining?), no instance would be able to scale to the point where it can compete with Reddit for example. If you were to want that.
Nothing stops them from doing so.
But I don’t think that’s the path you’ll see super often. Most people enthusiast enough to host their own instance and open it to others probably disagree with ads, and users are very likely going to reject them.
Plus, wether we like it or not, Lemmy is majoritarily used by people with a lot of tech knowledge - the exact same group you’d expect to be running ad blocking software.
But if federated social networks keep growing to the point they could rival a platform like Reddit, for sure some ad supported instances will coexist with user-funded ones.
I’d like the idea of certain instances becoming so large that it attracts the larger populous and becomes one of the major platforms. That is if it remains to be open source and federated.
(Edit: or just a community)
Why is background crypto mining not used? If it’s openly communicated and is an opt-in option, people might prefer that over donation or ads.
I’m probably just being idealist of whatever but personally I really hope it doesn’t. I don’t really like the idea of one instance getting so big that it has the ability to disrupt all the other ones, I’d much prefer in was all just little niche servers run by people who are passionate about the subject, even if it’s not making them any money.
But probably it’ll all just eventually conglomerate into one big thing and then turn rotten and we’ll all have to find something else, because that always seems to be the way it goes. But these are the wild west days for this platform, enjoy it while it lasts!
Ad paragraph 2: The beauty is that you do not have to only enjoy it while it lasts. FLOSS cannot end in this way. As already explained by @saucyloggins@lemmy.world, if this all just conglomerates to a centralized and rotten state, you simply create another instance and federate exclusively with those instances that are not rotten. Maybe only with the smaller instances that, for example, focus on a topic you find interesting.
You do not even have to fork and maintain anything. You simply use the SW as is, but without having to deal with the aspects that you find problematic (centralization on a few large instances and rotten admins, etc.).
Why is background crypto mining not used? If it’s openly communicated and is an opt-in option, people might prefer that over donation or ads.
Honey, no… I appreciate where your head is at with this one, but the goal is to make browsing an instance a good experience, and as computationally simple as possible. Adding mining to the front end of an instance client is very poor for the long term sustainability of the app, because it will incur electricity costs for the end users that will have diminished returns for the instance. So it is a very inefficient way to fund large instances. Users would save money by giving instances money directly rather than letting them mine on their clients.
Ads work because the advertiser believes that their is market value in showing a user an ad, and they can be right or wrong, but financially they are willing to pay more than the electricity cost of showing the ad. I don’t even mind the idea of ad supported instances in principle, although I would probably block them to preserve my browsing experience.
Crypto mining has a lot of negative conotations, and for good reason. The whole crypto ecosystem is full of scammers and bad actors. And ad supported websites only have incentive to monetize more and more until they are ad infested and can only be used with an ad blocker. That’s the state of a lot of the web today. Plus most big ad networks come with user tracking baked in which is another downside.
I’d rather have a nominal subscription model just to cover costs rather than see an ad anywhere. The cost of hosting per user can’t be much more than a dollar or two per month. Web hosting isn’t all that expensive nowadays.
Personally as a uswe I think running ads is not a bad idea, just if I would pay already (through donations for example), I prefer to have the option to show no ads.
I can imagine the current server owners either be decently supported by donations and/or see hosting a lemmy server currently more as a hobby.
Text is cheap. It doesn’t cost a ton of money to run these instances at least not yet, so people can do it as a hobby or with a few supporters.
It does however pay to ask your instance admins what their plans and policies are for moderation, defederating, finances, backups, having a money buffer in case things need to be spun down, and having multiple admins in case of disaster.
The image hosting might cost a bit though. Maybe instances can farm them off to places where storage is cheaper, or have premium membership options that includes image hosting. I would happily pay an instance a small amount to cover the convenience of being able to add images to posts and comments directly.
the same can be said about instances with millions of users uploading and downloading millions of images and videos. I’d love to follow along and see that journey would go. I mean, I hope I’m wrong but I just don’t see it being sustainable if you want to compete with reddit for example.
The solution is to lean into what Lemmy (and the Fediverse) was designed to do - be decentralized.
If we have more instances running, it would lighten the load on the larger instances (smaller instances can still subscribe to the larger one’s communities and such).
I think ads isnt a great idea. Firstly, generic ads don’t pay much, for actual good income you need to target ads, which now digs into users privacy and from there we have a slippery slope.
Most Mastodon, Friendica, Calckey instances accept donations.
It is likely that kbin/Lemmy instances will likely follow the same model.
Advertising would not work on the Fediverse as the adverts would be blocked by other instances so the spread would be very limited so not attractive commercially.
That is one of the beauties of the federated model.
Also, as there is no algorithm or data about user interests there’s no scope for advert targeting which advertisers would want.
The whole ethos of the #Fediverse is anti commercial.
This! Ads aren’t really good and have become malicious, manipulate and just bad in all kinds of things.
I’d rather have the instances communicate that they X amount of money for the moderation + servers costs. Since the communities on an insurance are closely connected, they’ll rather be happy to do that.
Add regular donations via patreon and it’s solved. To make transfers even more neutral, you could also accept cryptos for payments.
Who’s going to see them when everyone here uses adblocks and VPNs? Who’s gonna click on them when everyone here is a world-wary anti-consumer? Who’s going to buy anything when everyone here knows very well what they want and where to get it?
I’m talking about the possibility of it growing and reaching the larger populous. They do not have adblockers. They will therefore finance the instance. Not for profit, but for sustainability. But even now, there are people here who do not mind small and non-intrusive ads if it’s for a non-profit instance. Not everyone here, even now, is a world-wary anti-consumer, whatever that is.
