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. And not for profit, but solely for sustainability.
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 would much rather traditional ads than crypto mining. I don’t want Kbin or Lemmy to become environmentally unfriendly electricity sinks.
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!
But that’s the beauty of ActivityPub. You can always just fork the code yourself and start a new project that could federate with Kbin and Lemmy.
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.).
I consider stuff like that malware.
Why not just skip the step and instead ask people to join a mining pool instead of what some people to be malicious utilization of their machines.
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.
I’m gone if there is ads even though I’d block them. I’m sick of ads. They have ruined the internet .
If they add a gold like feature that splits between the instance and the project that would be useful in addition to community donations.
I’m here because its not like the rest of the internet. I run tor relays to help the network, I contribute to foss projects and I seed distros too for the greater good. There is enough of us here to keep it going.
I’ve been chipping in for my mastodon server for over a year. The admin there posts the finances so we all know when it’s time to kick in again, but if we went to a paid rather than donated set-up, then I’d be OK with that. If my admin decided that he needed to run ads that were like printed newspaper ads then I wouldn’t mind so much. But ads that track me, ads that change size, ads that show up and block some or all of the screen, ads that play video and audio, pretend to be content etc are the ads I dislike and I would flee.
Couldn’t agree more.
There should be somewhere a constitution in the federation within which advertisements are banned. Completely.
undefined> If they add a gold like feature that splits between the instance and the project that would be useful in addition to community donations.
This seems like the best solution, IMO.
Or, we could donate and not have to see ads. I’m sick of ads. Are you running or planning on running an instance with ads? I’d love to follow along and see how your journey would go.
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.
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.
Firstly, generic ads don’t pay much, for actual good income you need to target ads
True, but the Fediverse doesn’t need to make a profit. If generic ads are enough to (mostly) cover server costs then I don’t think there’d be a huge issue
I don’t think I agree with it being a competition.
it doesn’t need to be. I’m just saying that it may not be even possible to compete, if you were to want that.
Ads? Hard pass.
I’d rather set up my own server and federate.
You should set up your own server no matter what happens. That’s my plan.
Why do we want a single instance to be as large as reddit?
narrator: We don’t.
Why should it be ads?
There are so many different ways to have some form of monetization that is not intrusive.
Running Ads is not the only way to keep the lights on.
Just curious, what are some? I’ve no experience hosting any sort of website or anything. I assumed ads were pretty much the best bet?
On that note I highly suggest you read EFF’s “To save the News” articles, where they also go over why targeted ads don’t work. It’s a great read
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising
Ads pretty much are the best bet.
That said, they aren’t the only option. Donations are a big alternative. That’s why Wikipedia is ad free, for example. The other big one is subscriptions, but you basically have to offer a lot to convince anyone to subscribe. And a lot of “subscriptions” are actually just a convenient way to donate, which should be viewed differently from non-donations, since far fewer people are willing to donate, due to being completely optional.
There’s also sponsored content, but that’s just deceptive ads. I’d rather ads be 100% transparent and obvious about being an ad.
Finally there’s angel investors, but those aren’t typically paying out of the goodness of their heart. They usually want to grow a business that they’ll later commercialize. They’ll get a great period of time where everything just magically gets paid for, but odds are, they’re gonna do something terrible later to monetize.
An obligatory mention that ads don’t have to be scummy. That’s the norm, yeah, but it’s entirely possible to serve only ethical, clearly marked ads that don’t utilize deception or are scams. It doesn’t make as much money as accepting scummy ads, which is why we usually end up with ads being scummy, but it is an option.
Wikipedia gets a lot of funding from billionaires and corporations. It’s not going to be easy for most instances to be funded entirely by user donations long term.
Wikimedia Endowment
In January 2016, the Foundation announced the creation of an endowment to safeguard its future.[93] The Wikimedia Endowment was established as a donor-advised fund at the Tides Foundation, with a stated goal to raise US$100 million in the next 10 years.[94] Craig Newmark was one of the initial donors, giving US$1 million.[95] Peter Baldwin and his wife, Lisbet Rausing, donated US$5 million to it in 2017.[96]In 2018, major donations to the endowment were received from Amazon and Facebook (US$1 million each) and George Soros (US$2 million).[97][98][99] In 2019, donations included US$2 million from Google,[100] US$3.5 million more from Baldwin and Rausing,[96] US$2.5 million more from Newmark,[101] and another US$1 million from Amazon in October 2019 and again in September 2020.[102][103]
As of 2022, the advisory board consists of Jimmy Wales, Peter Baldwin, former Wikimedia Foundation Trustees Patricio Lorente and Phoebe Ayers, former Wikimedia Foundation Board Visitor Doron Weber of the Sloan Foundation, investor Annette Campbell-White, businessman Niels Christian Nielsen, and venture capitalist Michael Kim.
The Foundation itself has provided annual grants of $5 million to its Endowment since 2016.[104] These amounts have been recorded as part of the Foundation’s “awards and grants” expenses.[105] In September 2021, the Foundation announced that the Wikimedia Endowment had reached its initial $100 million fundraising goal in June 2021, five years ahead of its initial target.[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Wikimedia_Endowment
edit: removed “most”
I have contributed money repeatedly to Wikipedia and will continue to do so (I have no interest in editing). I’m not rich.
If you want to really measure the support for Wikipedia, you have to include the editing. That’s hard to measure in dollars but I’m sure it dwarfs the ‘billionaire’ contributions.
ads are shit. They make everything smelly and gross, and it has to be scrubbed.
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?
Finding advertisers, billing advertisers, and collecting from advertisers is all work you can avoid of your users just give you money.
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.
Weren’t ads the ruination of Reddit in the first place? When social media companies get hungry for advertising, it’s the users who suffer. Not just from the ads themselves, but from the advertisers’ expectations for the content on the site to conform to their standards.
It comes down to whether the owners have a spine.
4chan runs ads. Pornhub runs ads. They have most certainly said goodbye to a large number of advertisers who were uncomfortable with the content they host.
It became a problem because it meant they were forced to bow down to advertisers instead of leaning into user funding. Discord has leaned into user funding very heavily, but I don’t know of any other social media that is more funded by its users than it is by ads and is regularly used/promoted, at least in the US.
I run my own instance and I don’t run ads because I frankly hate seeing them myself. They clutter up the web view, cause lag on the webpage, and frankly are annoying and ugly to look at.
I’d rather pay out of my own pocket to keep my instance going rather than run ads. Donations would be ideal to help keep it running for longer. As sad as it is, if I couldn’t keep paying the server costs and there weren’t any donations… I’d just shut the server down. I personally will never run ads on an instance I run. I don’t want to perpetuate or support the lifeless corporate greed cycle.
How much money does it even cost running an instance?
I use https://1984.hosting (for privacy) to run my instance on a VPS. I’m using 1 core 2GB RAM VPS and that costs 10 dollars a month. So far everything looks to be running pretty well.
There probably are cheaper VPS providers as well, so you likely will be able to go cheaper.
And how many users can that host? With that price there maybe not really a need to actually run ads. What work is involved with running an instance?
If it is just a single person private instance, relatively cheap (like a few USD). As you scale it up though it does quickly get pricey. I think mine is around 20-25ish/mo plus 4/mo for backups. I know some of the bigger instances are closer to 50-100/mo and it’s only going up as their users go up.
If donations work, it maybe a good way to finance it. Does it require loads of work and moderation? Or is it easy
Donations seem to be plan for instances in the fediverse, I’ve heard of some other efforts to monetize instances either through advertising or subscriptions but apparently those instance were quickly defederated with.
There was a bit of technical work to stand up my own instance but developers are working on making setting up an instance easier. I haven’t had to moderate anything on my instance yet as it is <10 users at the moment but it is definitely something you have to keep in mind as your instance grows.
Defederated means isolated more or less? Good luck with your instance!
“Donations can bring us far”
Why do you believe donations won’t be enough? I dont think there is any evidence (yet) to support that.
wikipedia has survived off of just donations
although some models are going to be more expensive than others. hosting a reddit clone and a youtube clone require totally different levels of bandwidth and infrastructure
Wikipedia gets donations from famous people and large corporations.
I chip in a few bucks here and there, as well 🙂.
and me too. I’m neither of those things.
Fuck ads
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.
The point of Lemmy is NOT to have a single instance compete with Reddit! That would just be Reddit V2 then. There just needs to be more instances to distribute the user load more evenly. Running a small/medium sized VPS costs about as much as a Netflix subscription.
Sure, but couldn’t you still have a 30 million user community in a single instance? Or would you also like that community to be spread out over multiple instances? Probably not because that would splinter communities. But having such a big community in a single instance, is still hard to host. Expensive. And donations may not suffice.
This isn’t reddit. Stop trying to make it a centralized place.
What you call splintering communities is a feature of federation and helps everyone out.
Yeah forgive me for not understanding, but I thought the decentralisation is the distribution of different communites, not of the same communities. Or perhaps you are in fact talking about different communities, but then you have to make that clear.
But even so. There may be many instances, adding to the total cost, which would still increase, and so the number of people needing to pay. This may not scale. I’m very doubtful.
There was still decentralization of same communities on Reddit. There are multiple subs for gaming, anime memes, tech news, etc.
no instance would be able to scale to the point where it can compete with Reddit for example
Well I think that’s part of the point of the Fediverse: No single server has to scale that much. Sure, the big ones are going to get big and stay big, but no one Lemmy server is ever going to have as many people using it as Reddit does. That means the cost of each instance is going to be tiny in comparison to what Reddit spends to keep one big monolithic site running (which is easily in the millions). Fediverse will distribute users across many instances/platforms which also distributes the cost. Not only do users have many Lemmy instances, they’ve also got kbin, and mastodon, plus any other platform that joins ActivityPub.
Reddit/Facebook style monolithic sites are not viable. You see time and time again these platforms desperately trying to monetize because it’s so expensive to run. Fediverse can have millions and millions of users, but no single entity will have to foot that bill.
So many new users completely missing the point of the Fediverse. We want to avoid having one big instance with one person in control. At that point you may as well name them the CEO.
Someone who even takes the step into getting into the fediverse is probably using ad blockers for the purposes of security alone on a daily basis. I don’t see them disabling it.
Ads on Reddit were one of the reasons that third party apps were so popular… They didn’t show them.
The whole point is to get away from Reddit, not just make several smaller copies. No thanks. I’ve donated already, and I’ll donate again (to Jerboa, Lemmy devs, and instances if they prove their worthiness.
