I’ll start:
- Some significant portion of funds go towards development of the Lemmy software. 80%? Rest goes to lemmy instance hosting.
- Ads are reasonable and non-intrusive (no popups etc)
- People can still browse w/ an adblocker
I personally would gladly turn off my adblocker if I knew the ads were supporting development. Hell, I might even click a few!
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Yea. The question is completely absurd. There is no such thing as “reasonable ads”. It is also completely against the philosophy of the project and the developers would never agree to it.
You may as well just browse Reddit at that point.
Also, ads are very much “give an inch, take a mile” in nature. Once you open that door and have say a tiny banner ad, then it’s like “well that didn’t do much harm, let’s do a slightly bigger one”, then before you know it it you have sponsored posts, sidebar ads, videos and all that nonsense.
It’s just one of the avenues where enshittification creeps in IMO.
I see two misconceptions here.
First off, there is such a thing as reasonable ads, namely, ones you want to see. Sometimes you are looking to purchase something or some service, and you have to go out of your way to look for options. Ads for what you want, when you want is ideal. However, the point where advertising goes to far is trying to solve this problem by learning everything about you in order to effectively read your mind. That’s where it becomes unreasonable for me.
Second, the philosophy of lemmy (and federation in general) was not to tell all instances and users of said instances how they should use the internet, it was to give them the freedom to use the internet however they want, without sacrificing the connection with others who want to use it differently. It would not be equivalent to using reddit, because an instance that serves ads would have to compete with other instances who don’t. Whereas reddit is a walled garden where you are forced to take their ads along with their content, if a lemmy instance with ads became too “unreasonable”, the users have nothing to lose by leaving, the content is all federated.
The reality is, it’s not a matter if, but when we will see instances who try to fund themselves using ads. They’re free to serve them and you’re free to defederate from them in protest. That is the lemmy philosophy.
There are no ads I want to see. If I am looking to make a purchase I will specifically seek it out. There is no advertising for anything I want that is acceptable.
Implementing ads is more against the philosophy of free and open source software than it is with Lemmy or any piece of FOSS software specifically. As for Lemmy we just won’t see any ads on Lemmy.ml in particular which is run by the Lemmy developers. It’s also not entirely true that there is nothing to lose by just cutting off the Lemmy instance that starts implementing ads if people start getting to attached to specific communities or user accounts of theirs. It would be nice if Lemmy had some kind of community and user migration to mitigate this risk.
You can say what you believe the “philosophy of the fediverse/foss” is until you’re blue in the face, but there’s literally nothing in place to enforce what you’re saying except for the users. Someone could start an ad supported instance tomorrow, and if people use it, then they use it. The Lemmy devs can’t compel them to remove ads, that’s not part of the license (afaik, I’d be glad to be proven wrong), nor would they compel instances to defederate from them. That is the opposite of the fediverse philosophy.
I’m getting down voted for acknowledging reality, but it is my firm belief that the moment we ignore this reality is the moment someone steps in and exploits it. In order to maintain the fediverse as we want it, it takes a user base that prioritizes choosing instances that don’t serve ads over ones that do, and not a user base that thinks ad supported instances aren’t possible. Meta’s Threads was an obvious attempt, and I’m glad that most instances unanimously agreed they were antithetical to Lemmy, but it won’t always be that easy.
And I 100% agree that migration of communities and accounts between instances should be top of the list of Lemmy features. Without that, then yes, as you say, any communities/accounts on that instance are lost, or worse, keep users on an instance that hurts the community. But even still, unlike reddit, that would only amount to a small subset of communities/users, and not 100% of them.
I agree there is nothing stopping someone from starting an instance with ads. It’s just that the overlap of people that agree with such a thing and are enthusiasts of free and open source software must be very niche.
I’m also not suggesting the devs could or should do anything about it. I’m just saying it isn’t something they would do. It would be worth determining which license is being used, but I doubt it is one that prohibits commercialization of Lemmy.
At any rate I don’t think such an instance would survive as the type of user that would agree with both ads and Foss is limited. It is unlikely to ever become a real issue.
My hope is that Lemmy/the fediverse can survive growth beyond just the tech enthusiast demographic, though. I would prefer to see the platform be the best option for social media for everyone, and not just one that makes compromises to maintain privacy for people who are interested in that sort of thing.
In 50 years I don’t want to see the lion’s share of content still being generated and only existing on proprietary platforms. I would much rather it be in openly accessible ones.
And given the power that ads have at monetizing platforms that are otherwise unmonetizable, as the platform grows, it’s inevitable that we will see instances start to leverage them.
Then our goals are fundamentally at odds. My hope for the future is the minimization or elimination of the ad driven internet. I’d rather see Lemmy die than succumb to ads and commercialization.
In 50 years from now maybe we will have found a better way. Perhaps instead of leaving the idea of social media and the Internets “public square” to corporations we could fund it in a more socialized way and have it be some kind of tax expense. I don’t want to see companies profiting off the simple act of communicating online forever. Maybe in the past it was novel enough to be a real technological hurdle that could only be done with privatized companies, but at some point I think it should be more like a public utility.
The issue with your first point is that in order to be served ads you actually want to see, the provider (instance admin) needs to know what you like and that way leads to tracking scripts.
That’s not “the issue” with my first point, that IS my first point.
In a perfect world, a “reasonable ad” shows you exactly what you’re looking for, without leaking any information about yourself. I understand that it’s tempting to say that’s not possible, but “proof by not being able to think of a solution” isn’t a proof, that’s why I’m hesitant to make such a strong claim.
Zero Knowledge proofs were thought of as impossible until it turned out they weren’t. Can someone serve “Zero Knowledge ads”? Maybe one day, idk.
Even if you don’t like ads, you can’t deny that they’re a powerful means of funding projects that otherwise can’t be sustainably monetized. We learned this lesson 20 years ago when the first federated internet platform hit the mainstream: the world wide web. So imo there’s no reason to think the fediverse isn’t about to relearn the same lesson.
It’s entirely possible, I agree, but as of right now, there’s only really two ways to show a person ads - targeted or not targeted. And that applies to all forms of advertising really, not just online. I don’t know enough about marketing to say how long it might take to develop zero knowledge ads but in terms of funding development and hosting we’re very long way away from that being a possibility.
And the ethos of the Fediverse was, in part, formed around the idea of not being served ads that were either utterly irrelevant and thus irritating or scarily relevant and thus unsettling. The Fediverse is pretty closely aligned with open source and privacy philosophy. I think any instance that runs ads is going to see either no revenue as they’ll be adblocked or the instance will see a sharp drop off in users.
What part of “no” do you not understand?
No one wants ads. Conversation over.
The second I see ads on an instance, I’m off it. Fuck that noise.
I’d rather just donate.
I’m happy when an instance owner just says how much it costs to run a server, how many people actually manage it and how much time they spend to keep it running. I also like it when they just come out and say “we need this much money to keep things running every month, every year, etc”
Then I just donate and there are more a dozen ways people can send and recieve donations.
I don’t mind paying for things and services if the person or people I’m donating to are just honest about what they need and why, especially if it’s a service I use often.
Same, but sometimes it’s not possible due to the different payment methods that don’t work the same accross different countries.
It’s unlikely ads would bring in any significant amount of money from them se people, in that case.
What if people who donate no longer see ads? Problem solved.
No, this is rewarding the implementation of ads and can’t be thought of as donating anymore. You are paying to remove ads thus giving them money for having added ads to the site.
What if the ads are optional, they’re turned off by default, but if you can’t afford to donate but still want to support you can turn them on for yourself?
Would you do that? I’m asking genuinely
Tbh yeah, as long as the ads weren’t malicious or intrusive I’d happily have ads if it supported the instance
It all sounds like semantics to me. You could implement donations first and then say OK for all you people who haven’t donated we’re going to punish you by showing you ads. Bottom line is this shit isn’t free. It has to get paid for somehow.
then it’s not really donating
There are no circumstances under which I would be okay with it. Including ads means there is a chance that content is removed to appease advertisers.
I will happily donate to my instance once they start accepting donations.
Under no conditions. Don’t try to normalize ads.
Bro, who are these people trying to normalise ads? Do y’all work for ad-companies or have you been brainwashed enough to believe ads are the only way? Ads are a braindead problem for another problem looking for a solution.
Fuck ads. Write that 50 times. If isn’t through your skull after 50, write another 50 and repeat until it is. Fuck ads.
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I get that you don’t understand the ads business is propped up on halfwits like you, but you do realize that this isn’t reddit, right?
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I would much rather see the “Daily costs donation bar” that Reddit used to have
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Straightforward funding requests from the instance are just fine. Advertisements can gargle a cactus.
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Never, i would leave my instance immediately. Thankfully i dont believe this will ever happen. If admins need funds community members will donate. Through mutual cooperation we can keep these spaces free of the commercial bullshit that has infested every other faet of our lives.
I’d be okay with devs promoting their own FOSS software, etc. And seeing donation buttons every now and then. No trad ads plz. We have enough of those.
Nah. I don’t plan to ever have ads. Hardly any users so my nice little single server will be fine for years to come and I can afford it no problem. If somehow I got a lot of users, I’d likely just close registration rather than ads. I hate ads!
In my view, the problem isn’t monetizing an instance, but that ads right now are fundamentally problematic. I don’t know of a way to introduce ads that wouldn’t be intrusive, invade user privacy, introduce bad motives for admins, and just be generally unpleasant. If money is a problem, I think a subscriber model would be better suited for the platform rather than taking any step to normalize ads.
- Transparency - where the ads come from, how the revenue is used, etc.
- the ads are safe and appropriate and follow the same rules as posts and comments
- the ads are clearly labeled or otherwise visually distinct and not disguised as user generated content
- the ads do not make up more than 10% of the displayed content (by any metric (screen space, text, bytes, etc.)
- the ads are in like/kind to the surrounding content (e.g. if the community is text only, so are the ads, if the community allows images but not video, then the ads cannot move, etc.)
- no tracking
- the ads can be removed via subscription or donation
- no double dipping (e.g. charging for access and still showing ads.) Members who support the instance should not see ads, members who see ads should not be required to pay.
- a transparent removal process for problematic ads
It should be opt-in.
Virtually nobody opts in, and power users opt out. If someone is running ads, they presumably want to make money, and they’ll only be making money if it’s on by default
Yes. That is the point.
exactly. This is the only type of ads I’d tolerate
