So how long until the Fediverse is monetized?
3 years ago by ryan213 to c/nostupidquestions
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.
But it’s sustainable if it’s non profit.
Most third party Reddit users were happy to pay in the range of $5 a month. The reason everything is shutting down now is because they don’t just want to break even, they want profit, and a shit ton at that.
The fediverse makes social media non-profit by default which means that we can all share the cost.
Wikipedia is one of the largest websites in the world and is still non-profit. It shows that it’s sustainable.
But even non-profits have costs that they need to cover somehow. If they don’t, they’re still not sustainable.
They also wanted control over the user base, so they could do more intrusive bullshit to push more ads onto users. With the fediverse there's no monopoly on the platform so no one instance can get full control and abuse their power. With Reddit the only choice was to either submit or leave completely. With Lemmy all you need to do is swap instances.
But it's sustainable if it's non profit.
I think this is something that's hard to organize with our current economic system, but very much worth experimenting with.
The neat thing is we can try any concept we can dream up and federate. People can run through funding concepts and structures and failure isn't all that bad.
Donations are already happening in the Fediverse. Lemmy,world is funded by donations to the Mastodon.world instance. Many Mastodon users donate to their instance. I give $3 per month to my instance (sfba.social). They put out a quarterly report breaking down how much cam in and went out.
I donate in order to have an ad-free experience. If the admins separate the finances of Lemmy.world and Mastodon.world I will donate here as well.
This is inevitable as well.
A user base as large as Reddit has an infra bill in the tens of millions. And that's mature, with cost optimization at all levels to reduce compute, static content costs, more effective caching....etc
Lemmy instances are probably an order of magnitude more expensive to run on a per-user basis, at least.
This means the bill for the Lemmy fediverse if it had the active user base of reddit could be conceivably be near or over a collective $100mill/y with the majority of that just being a result of fragmented, high cost, infrastructure running a (at scale) low performance application.
The cost will be spread out on an instance by instance basis due to which the cost per user will be low and if not they can also host their own instance which doesn't cost a lot. If it's something around $5 a month I wouldn't mind paying to support a service I plan on using everyday.
If anyone puts ads on an instance it's not really a good encouragement for someone to join, and what with the nature of the fediverse it's more likely to make people try finding a better deal elsewhere.
I would definitely move to a different instance if my instance started using ads to fund itself - I'd rather the instance mandated a subscription than doing that.
Also another thing to consider is how other instances started spewing ads all over the fediverse - the ones that have managed to get by without advertising would probably defederate from those that did so that they don't end up showing another instances ads. Meaning it makes no sense to support ads in the first place if you want to stay federated.
That said if it got so unsustainable that I had to pay a subscription I would probably consider moving to a smaller instance anyway or hosting one myself for myself.
Of course, but the important part is you have choice and instances will keep each other in check because you can always switch. With a centralized system like Reddit there's only one provider and if you don't use them you're locked out of the system entirely. This gives them a monopoly on the platform and the power to do anti user bullshit.
Email is also a protocol with distributed servers and compared to that I think each fediverse instance has far less lock in. With email I can switch providers but it's a big hassle to have to change all my accounts and tell people to use the new address and set up forwarding etc. With my Lemmy account I don't really care that much about my user history since it's all anonymous anyways and it's not connected to anything that's central to my life so if I have to switch instances it's not a big deal. It would be nice to have some kind of account linking to show that the different instance accounts belong to the same person, and that should definitely be possible to implement, but honestly it's not even that big of a deal to me.
@lemmy.world
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
That's it.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Let everyone have their own content.
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
go to feed...
@lemmy.world
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
That's it.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Let everyone have their own content.
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
go to feed...
As soon as Lemmy instances are unsustainable out of pure interest for the concept of the Fediverse. I doubt there will be subscriptions, first it'll be donations, and then some instances may have ads. It's an inevitable that both will happen (either on the same instance, or some instances opting for donations to stay up, and others opting for ads to stay up). No one can run the servers necessary for this platform out of pure charity; the bill for the Fediverse is going to be due someday, and it has to be paid.
save