We can't expect everyone else to self-host. The question is, what would be the most viable solution for a better (ad free, Surveillance Capitalism free) Internet that can work at scale?
rglullis
joined 1 year ago
I’ll offer that Lemmy instances are somewhat analogous to the hobbyist or special interest forums of yesteryear. A “webring” of sorts. Smaller, cheaper, manageable by dedicated individuals…
I'd would hope that was the case with Lemmy, but it seems that the majority of people that moved are just going to the largest instances and trying to replicate what they had on Reddit.
For Mastodon, there are indeed a good number of servers run by a small group of friends who simply don't care about its cost, but it's getting pretty clear that any instance with more than 1000 active users is simply not sustainable on donations alone. Every month there is a new instance closing down because the admins realized that the cost per user are growing faster than the donation base.
This is why I am not holding my hopes up for Twitter, but I do believe that the Fediverse can work because we can have many different small service providers that would all compete for its customers, and not having ads would be definitely an advantage.
Lemmy/Kbin/Mastodon hasn’t caught up to that level yet so I don’t see a point in paying for that.
Isn't that a chicken-and-egg problem? If all the other alternatives are crap but can survive because of their deep pockets, how can we ever expect the Fediverse to grow without supporting it regardless of its current size?
What if I tell you that for $5/month you can have a Mastodon account and bring 9 more of your friends?
For those that are saying "no" because it's Musk: would you be willing to pay to your account on Lemmy, Mastodon, or any other social network that you happen to use?
Let me be specific: I am not asking if you donate or contribute to any server. I am asking if you'd sign up to a social network that required payment from every user as a measure to avoid spammers and to keep the service running.
Look, we can hate Twitter and Musk all we want, but (a) the headline is absurdly false and (b) charging small amounts from every user instead of having an ad-funded business is probably the most honest and fair way to have a healthy internet and I for one would welcome the change. If Twitter becomes paid-only and removes all advertising and tracking (that's the the big if) it can find its way to become the only sustainable and (dare I say?) ethical social media network around.
I strongly believe that a lot of the decline in the quality of civic debate and the increasing polarization of our society is unhealthy and can be traced back to the point where online media started depending on "eyeballs" and advertisers. (Don't believe me? Just check the headline and read the article, now see how it outright LIED in the headline to make you click). Every news media channel became more and more tabloid-like in a desperate attempt to keep their viewership numbers, quantity over quality became the norm and everything became a "market audience" segmented to perform well to specific editorial guidelines.
To have meaningful change and actual progress, we need to have a healthy media that is focused on pursuing the truth. The current landscape is just a popularity contest. If people are able to vote with their wallets and if they become more than just a number , the people holding the megaphones will win more by paying attention to us than by treating us as cattle who can be milked out.
If you are a Spotify exec, there is a problem.
If you are an indie musician who sees your payout being reduced because Spotify says they need to pay white noise podcasts, there is a problem.
If you believe that this is a zero-sum game and Spotify prints money like magic, there is no problem.
White noise it's not copyrightable. So, anyone can make a copy, including Spotify themselves. They could "pirate" all the white noise podcasts and redirect them to something they own. Problem solved.
A bit too vague. Please:
The reason that I am asking you to be specific is that there is a good chance that professional providers can be more efficient than any "community-based" solution. We can have hundreds/thousands of independent professional service providers, each serving around 100-500k people, which would make a sustainable and healthy market. On the other hand, I sincerely doubt that we would be able to serve the 2 billion people on e.g Instagram by having millions of "community based" instances of Pixelfed.