Individual instances could theoretically monetize if their owners wished, they could show you ads, sell your data, sell you merch, sell the instance to a third party, all the same strategies as any other internet institution.
The Fediverse as a whole cannot, though, due to its decentralized ownership and development structure.
They could always do unidirectional federation and only take feeds from others but not send their updates out and make it walled off for a subscription.
I think I would buy a lemmy.world mug, as long as it’s a huge one. Don’t know about ads tho. Selling user data would end with everyone scrambling their content into Lorem ipsum and scatter to smaller instances. Lemmings are different from redditors.
In a sense, but I doubt there is the same level of tracking. Lemmy doesn’t (as far as I assume) track how long you spend on a page, what you click on, how long you stay, etc. That’s a pretty big difference compared to just what you posted or commented.
User data are more than post/comment history and likes. Where do you connect from (no matter whether it gives hint about your relationship status or your work and customer), which comments you didn’t write, which device you use to connect and more.
Lemmy instance I know, don’t collect much data, hence the short term of services and the lack of cookies pop up unlike big (social) media sharing their data with hundreds of " partners"
I don’t really see how. If they tried to charge you, why wouldn’t you just join another instance? You’d still see the same stuff. Unless they de-federated, (and I only barely know what I’m talking about here) and became a privately owned site, but then, they’d lose all the content from other instances, which people would flock to immediately.
It could be monetized by showing regular ads next to content a and disguised adds as content. Also, if using the federated API, they could push some sponsored content desgized as such.
This cannoy be applied to the whole fediverse but only to instances whose owners a want monetization.
I am sure that if implemented, someone would make it work on mobile apps and others while showing a setting to “disable ads”. And there would be forks that block adds by default etc.
The thing is, in a scenario where it’s as big as Reddit in terms of users, most of the content on the fediverse then would be local to them so if they defederated everyone or everyone defederated them, who’d really be cut off from whom? They’d probably only be marginally less appealing to their user base who might not even know how the whole fediverse thing worked anyway.
100% certainty. the data gleemed from the content produced by a lively community is valuable to data mining and marketing. once an instance makes their radar, they will want a pipe into it. whether they pay the instance owner, the ISP/cloud it sits on, or just copy the data maliciously, they’ll get it and sell it. and then have a plan to manipulate it / sell to that user pool as well.
it’s “natural” (for assholes) to do this. seems to happen everywhere, but lemmy and fediverse are prone to it for now.
I assume that 80% of the users are on one or two instances. Maybe the operators of those instances could sell it to a big publishing company, like Condé Nast or something. That way it will be easier to vertically integrate advertisement between traditional print media, online publications, and less formal online gathering places. It’s a win win at the end. The original operators get their bag, and the community keeps going while being supported by a successful business.
Definitely. At least the damage could be largely limited to just that instance though. I can’t seriously imagine the people behind it letting their ideals trump profit for an extended period of time, especially with financial imperatives from the costs associated with the infrastructure required if that one instance alone had so much traffic.
Theoretically though, if it started going rancid it’d be much easier to jump ship without losing out on too much, that is unless they defederate with everyone or everyone defederates with them, either of which could be distinct possibilities. In that case, I guess you’d just have another Reddit.
I can imagine a model of ethical, user opt-in ad service, which could be privacy aware and still allow monetizing. Users could actively subscribe topics of goods-services they are interested in, as to sponsored account, or in even more anonymised, rss-like way (techies surely know more appropriate methods).
I would subscribe to some ethical and relevant for me ads, especially if it helped sustain and develop a platform.
The fediverse was intended to be the opposite of the ad infested enshittified internet. Inserting ads would turn it into the same shit.
Wanting to receive ‘relevant’ ads is wanting to have personal information harvested, since that is the only way to make that work. That necessity is what led to google goong from a useful, minimal search engine into the enshittified mess that it is now.
Wanting users to actively engage in ads is even worse. Just wanting to get fucked over by corporate interests, just begging for the whole thing lean into sponsored content pushing out any user created content and eventually requiring draconian moderation and centralization to appease corporate interests because that is what always happens. There are no ethical and relevant ads. Relevant ads cannot be ethical
Your opinion is what led streaming services to change from affordable and easy fo access in netflix to ad infested, shittily designed and poorly run streaming sevices. Wanting ads to be added to a free community supported network of instances means you want the whole thing to turn to shit. There is no other possible outcome.
Thanks for detailing. I also witnessed what happened, but I tend to blame corporate surveillance capitalism instead demonizing the very concept of ads.
Firstly, ads are information of value exchange, which itself has value. Even anarchists need to exchange goods and services.
Also, enthusiasm-based services die, because volunteers get tired, retire or find new exciting projects. They need money or other value to keep working in the long term. And we want them to.
Now, can there be a different system of ads, which would not enshittify it all? I think there can be, maybe it isnt yet created.
From the user perspective, I can imagine an option in server settings, letting me switch on some ads to support its upkeep. It would let me tick some boxes, e.g. only handmade fishing gear and personal IT assistance (whoever the sponsors are). It could be served passively like rss, with no tracking - but the server owners could be paid by estimates, like tv does. Or maybe even some ethical cryptography is possible in the open source system.
Maybe not exactly like that, but you get my line of thinking. Because there is also another type of enshitification: open source projects get abandoned, broken and die just like commercial ones.
Yes, there are donations, but most of us can afford to make only so much of them.
Therefore I prefer to think about reinventing and reclaiming system of honourable advertising, instead of extracting unpaid labor from all those volunteers until they quit.
Now, can there be a different system of ads, which would not enshittify it all? I think there can be, maybe it isnt yet created.
Not in the context of for profit business. Ads for free (mostly funded through taxes) services like libraries, sure. But they aren’t selling anything, they are purely for awareness. Once money is involved the incentive to become worse over time is part of advertising.
The fediverse already exists without ads. It is built to grow by increasing the number of instances. Advertising would encourage fewer instances through competition.
honourable advertising
Fucking LO L
FYI enshittification means becoming shitty in the pursuit of squeezing any bit of money at the user’s expense. It was a specific form of this originally, but it still means becoming shitty because of capitalist motivations. Abandoned open source software is shitty, but it is not enshittification. It can also be forked and continued by someone else.
Future will tell. Id like to find out that you are right and fediverse will prevail without monetisation. Yet its growth seem really sluggish so far.
The world needs decent communication ecosystem, we need less manipulated societies at least for democracies to work. Fedi has a potential to be a world changing project, not just another irc-type cave of geeks.
You are right that enshitiffication does not quite fit here, as by Doctorow, it also involves reaching market dominance, which is a prerequisite to squeezing more velue and simultaneously offering less. Getting paid for your work is a far cry from market dominance :) It is just fair.
I already pay a few bucks a month into the kitty for this instance, because I’d rather be out the price of a coffee than deal with corporate bullshit, AI, the algorithm, and GD motherfucking ads.