You must log in or register to comment.
Good, the sooner they run it into the ground the better.
I got out just in time, it seems.
How much longer will Bluesky survive without doing the same?
It’s either ads or a paid subscription. One of the two are inevitable, because running infrastructure to support millions of users ain’t free.
you were in?!
Remember to send financial support to your server
Wish I could, but I haven’t found a way to do that. I guess the admin is working on it?
For yours, there is a heart outline up at the top of the page which leads to:
That’s not donating to my instance though, it’s just donating to the devs. Not quite the same thing.
Yes, I noticed that. It was the only donation link I spotted though. You could ask the admins that are listed in the right-side panel (TheDude, etc).
Yeah, many people have asked, but nothing yet. Not sure why it hasn’t happened yet.
Check the About section for your server like this, not every server has donations set up tho https://thebrainbin.org/about
I don’t see one for my instance.
I think they don’t care as much, because the server runs on 100% renewable energy: pure Canadian maple syrup.
Is this some fancy way of saying “Please tip your waitress”
Please tip your federatress
As someone not using Threads this is a big surprise. I mean I’m surprised it didn’t already have ads.
That was my first thought. I was surprised to find this out.
As another someone who doesn’t use Threads, it is a big surprise to find out there’s a website or something called Threads that looks like it’s related to email and apparently is popular.
“is popular”
Im pretty sure they auto setup an account on threads for anyone on Instagram to artificially make it popular.
It’s Facebook brand Twitter, and is or was planned to be compatible with Mastodon (Fediverse Twitter)
As someone who uses thread how do you guys sew stuff?
I use duct tape.
we glue or melt things together. sometimes a stapler comes in handy as well
That was quick.
I’m honestly amazed they didn’t have ads out of the gate, Meta’s whole schtick is advertising and data.
Facebook famously didn’t have ads for a long time, even when people were pressuring Zuck to add them to keep the site from going running out of capital. Call it a loss leader, call it enshittification or market capture, whatever. Most companies that can afford to will start out being really great to their users, and once they have captured a section of the market, they start clawing more of that value back for themselves and their investors.
They thought they could EEE the fediverse first.
Turns out people on decentralised social media aren’t totally fucking brain dead and could see it coming a mile away.
What does EEE stand for?
If they had any intention of EEE the fediverse, they wouldn’t have required users to opt into it, or made it unidirectional.
I think it’s pretty clear at this point that their only intention was to head off antitrust actions. But I think it’s safe to say we won’t see anymore development on that front in the near future.
BlueSky is next
BlueSky has some novel monetization concepts but yes, I think they will eventually find that those are not sustainable and will introduce ads eventually.
Isn’t the bluesky client open source? That would make it harder to force ads on everyone.
I don’t think so.But there is an API you can build clients for.
Looks like the client app is open source: https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app
Wow! I stand corrected. I’m surprised!
Sure, but ultimately the ads would be fed by the service, not the client. And they can always do like Twitter and Reddit did and kill the API so no third-party clients are functional.
They can do that, but I believe the various laws about openness in advertising make it pretty hard to hide ads from the client.
How hard is it to run a platform charging a couple dollars a month so that you don’t need to turn into a ghoulish capitalist nightmare? Like, really. If even one of them went the “no ads, ever, just a tiny monthly fee” wouldn’t that be better? Wouldn’t everyone flock there? Is everyone so dumb that they think these huge sites will run for free?? No… wait I think I’ve answered my own question…
Sounds good to me but the ideal of social media is to network with as many people as possible. There are billions of people globally who would never want to pay or couldn’t even afford a few dollars. Which would leave it as some kind of niche premium service that can’t connect to a lot of people.
That’s also besides the fact that the purpose of social media now is to connect brands and political groups to you over any actual connection with other people.
Disable ads for $2 a month?
Just anything this doesn’t then try to bleed people in every conceivable way…
All the algo manipulation comes from an over reliance on ad income. If a social network put its costs + a modest profit onto premium users what would that look like?
Surely at some point a network that can honestly say “we aren’t reliant on sponsors” is going to be appealing to enough people. (Even if there is then a free ad supported tier for those who don’t have an option - it would hardly be worse than what they’ve currently got)
It’s not about being dumb and expecting stuff for free but a general anger towards subscription based models. Fair models exist and are possible, but are a collateral of the general hate.
Then, free alternatives exist, and believe it or not, some people do not have a tiny monthly fee they could spare or do not want to pay for something that a free alternative exists.
Threema tried exactly that, and failed comically.
social media depends on having a critical mass of users, and that’s only going to happen with a free model.
Yes. I perhaps should have stated the other way round.
What about “ethical” social network. That’s free and ad based if you want that. And the ads are present but less manipulative because the goal is to cover costs not maximise profit.
And then that’s a premium option if you want to have no ads and full control of your content feed.
The reason Facebook and co don’t offer this is because they apparently make massive amounts from each user ($68). And that only because they engage in whatever ghoulish behaviour get people locked in enough to deliver that
An ethical social network wouldn’t have to drive as much per user, because it would publicly limit itself to modest profit. Covering free use with ads presumably possible. Cost of premium being running cost + modest profit seems like it wouldn’t be that high surely?
theoretically, sure it’s possible. but in practice, capitalism will win out in the end. this is pretty much what happened to reddit. first unobtrusive non-targeted ads, then reddit gold… you know the rest.
I think capitalist ghoulishness dominates innovation at the moment. Because massive resources will always be ahead doing new things. But at some point - I hope - a fairly agreeable social network becomes a sort of ‘solved problem’. Perhaps some FOSS version becomes available that’s not cutting edge but gets the job done. It would lack the sophisticated needed to coerce people and milk their attention, but that’s not needed for our purposes.
The appeal in popular social networks isn’t innovation, it’s the sheer quantity of other users. You don’t need resources just to do new things, you need resources to build and maintain the infrastructure to serve all those users. That’s why FOSS social media will always be niche like Lemmy and mastodon.
A social app? Impossible. Everyone will just say “But I get Facebook for free!”
People pay to remove ads from YouTube, Netflix, Amazon etc.
The point wouldn’t be to put people off, you can still push the platform to the masses as “free”. It’s just that once you’re there if you find the ads annoying or you don’t want your feed algo’d to death, then it has a “remove ads” paid option that currently platforms all lack…
Facebook makes ~$68/user/month. No one is going to pay anything close to that to remove ads.
Really? Jeez. Last I heard, evidently incorrectly, was a few dollars at best. That explains their ghoulishness somewhat.
Even so, Facebook brings in enormous profit. Evidently a result of maximizing whatever they can get away with
I’m wondering what the costs are to cover just hosting / content delivery.
Ie, is it feasible at some point that a not-for-profit social platform comes about. Or a for profit one that promotes itself as ethical and subsequently charges premium users based on running costs + moderate profit rather than pushing every kind of manipulative behaviour it can get away with just to maximise ad value.
It’s certainly possible. If we the people cared enough about the impact of social media on society we would demand funding from our government, if only in the form of a grant or similar.
I donate to the fediverse. My new server does a monthly state of the server thing and I use that as a reminder to donate. Considering server costs, I believe I cover more than my share, but most people probably don’t donate at all, and frankly the people running the server deserve compensation for their efforts and that is never included in costs.
I might feel differently if it was a sub, though. It’s a world of difference between me choosing to donate and someone reaching into my wallet on a monthly basis. Idk. But I’m definitely not having ads.
That’s the idea - it’s a choice. If people want free or don’t care about ads - then that’s how their use gets funded. For people who want no ads and no curation of their feed to favour advertisers , then theres the premium option.
I guess the difference would be the premium cost is self limited to running costs + modest profit and for this reason the whole site is promoted as ethical…
People act like server costs are hella per person here? Realistically one person donating 10$ covers like 100 ppl that month? Or am I way off? Vps are cheap.
it prob covers way more than 100
It would be better, yes, but you’d be sacrificing 90% of your userbase going that route. The vast majority aren’t going to pay a monthly fee for a social media account. One or the other is inevitable, though. Server infra ain’t free, after all.
How about it starts free + ad based like any other network but offers a premium tier that removes ads and gives full control of feed that current networks don’t offer. They don’t offer this because manipulating people is apparently far more lucrative than any reasonably priced premium tier. But this is only because they’re a ‘profit at any cost’ company. If an alternative ethical social network advertised the fact that it only makes a modest profit so that it’s free tier is ad based but not unhealthy and the premium tier is reasonably priced. I wonder if such a thing is possible.
Obviously no current network does this because they’re investor funded and committed to max profits.
Yeah that’s the scary thing. Ads work so well you can’t even buy your way out in many cases. I wish micropayments caught on instead of subscriptions. I’m ok to pay a reasonable cost per use, but I hate blood suckling subscriptions for things I rarely touch. I’d STFU and post much fewer and more meaningful comments on Lemmy for example if it was 0.1 cents per comment or something.
Have you met people?
Introducing even a 0.49 charge per month would flood the front page of reddit and lemmy with “enshittification” rants for days. And 9 in 10 people would leave the platform, if not more.
I should have stated it the other way round. Free and ad driven by default (like normal and like what people are used to) but an optional premium tier that removes ads and gives more control of your feed.
You would think, but seeing how people react to YouTube premium (at least on social media) I still have doubts.
That is true. Why people think enormous content servers should be run for free boggles my mind…
they could run off donations, its entirely possible, we got blender over here a nonprofit making great software, wikipedia exists, we can have donation based platforms
Oh no. Anyway…
To serve you relevant ads, Meta will use your activity on Threads and Instagram, the posts you interact with, your email address, and “your activity from off Meta technologies,” according to a support page.
Do I read it right in that they’ll try to follow you around Fediverse, aside from monitoring you on every site they already have a nose on?
De-fe-de-rate.
Probably more about their general user tracking than that tbh. Meta has always had profiles for everyone because of Facebook/meta integrations on every website
True
You not only misinterpreted the description, but then you proposed a measure completely useless to either the real situation or your imagined one.
You did lemmy proud.
Eh, my only complaint is that they lumped the “r” in with the “ate.” The “r” is part of the previous syllable.
That said, I highly doubt defederating would actually solve anything. If they want to scrape, they’ll scrape.
Exactly, all info on lemmy is public, defederation would help neither with 3rd party cookie tracking (the real situation) nor with tracking on other instances (what the user imagined they are doing).
AHAHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
Good news I guess!
Mastodon isn’t.
Lemmy isn’t.
Pixelfed isn’t.
🤞🏻
@ThomasCrappersGhost @moseschrute tbh, any of the single instances can have them, but at least you can choose a diferent instance or in last resort run your own
Thank fuck.
Btw, I have this referral code for PAID: Shadow Workers. If you use my sign up code you’ll receive 10,000 SlutCoin and a free MegaSlurpJob, so sign up today with the code: LemonParty69
I am in.
Surprisedpikachu
Last time I checked Threads was 95% brand and influencer posts anyway.
Ha you are saying that there’s nobody left? the remaining 5% must be robots lol
You know that you are saying this on a platform with an active user base in the low 6 figures, right?
You know the meme “there’s dozens of us”?
You’ve got ads. Eventually but full-blown ads.
Not just HV but full-blown ads.
