this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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Ribbit
I don't think there's any advertising budget being spent on these fedi platforms, which makes it impressive they've grown so much from media exposure and word of mouth.
We growth with big corps big mistakes
The fediverse isn't driven by profit, so growth for the sake of growth isn't necessary. Word of mouth will let the fediverse platforms grow naturally and sustainably
It would be a mistake to not realise that they operate in the same virtual space as profit driven corporations though. They should still be professionally run with proper pr and marketing. Whether that is volunteer led, or alternative funding like Wikipedia or charging corporate clients etc.
Personally, I'd like corporate integration to fund the free part, but with no additional benefit. Just the same access that private users get for free. Otherwise it's a slippery slope.
Hard to regulate though. How woukd you verify, who would verify? Could be like fair trade products, whereby there is a certifying body. User instances could decide to only federate with corporate instances that are registered with this non profit. They would pay for their access, like Reddit is asking from their apps, except actually reasonable costs. This could be disbursed to large instances with over X amounts of users to fund their computing needs.
Given the fediverse is a not for profit, any advertising campaigns would have to be fronted by someone who wants to pay for it. It's not that we can't do advertising campaigns, it's just we can't use the money people dontate to keep the servers running for marketing, because people expect that money to be used in making sure the server exists into the future - it would have to be a separate donation soley for marketing it, or maybe some rich person could decide to pay for marketing in full.
On top of that, we can't let sign ups exceed to amount we get from donations - that would kill the server or force the server owner to shut down sign ups and, worst case if they happened way too fast- the owner remove some of the more recent signups, which would reflect badly on said owner.
In other words, if you want to advertise it, go ahead but don't expect anyone else to contribute cash to help as marketing a open and donation based system like this could have its consequences.
Oh, I completely agree. What I mean is that a not for profit can still live in the commercial world of it wants.
Not for profits still need stuff. Like offices or servers or staff. How the funding comes about without compromising the mission is the question.
Look at cancer charities fund raising. Look at Wikipedia. Look at Firefox.
The funding model doesn't have to be the same for every instance. Some could be just volunteer funded or donated by the admins as a cost of their hobby.
However, the broader community will not tolerate a social media space that is not professionally run with uptime and lack of errors and downtime. The only way the commercial ones die is if the free ones are better. Look at piracy. It's not a cost problem in music versus movies versus games, it's a service problem.
I'll agree with you that a server needs moderation or administration staff in proportion to its size. Wether those staff are all volunteers or paid depends on the overall budget of the server.
But I don't think office space really makes any sense For a decentralized platform like this one - the only place that makes sense is for the actual lead developers of the software that the platform runs. And even then with the WFH culture of today I think even that is not likely to exist.
As for server administration, the most I could really see is a regular online meeting to keep interests aligned as well as a staff audit log for the server owner to review. And Lemmy already keeps a public audit log anyway.
As for your last point I wholly agree with you. The whole point of federated systems like mastodon and Lemmy is to move away from the for profit system so we can avoid enshittification. It's meant to be a method of spreading the cost across multiple smaller nonprofit organisations. And hopefully we can avoid it and therefore make the platform better.
That being said, the only thing that prevents a corporate entity from joining in is the instances and their federation policies themselves.
The only other way I see parts of the fediverse become for profit is if an existing non profit turns for profit, which is really only a big deal if it's one of the larger instances. And as for how the rest of the fediverse deals with that. Well it's again up to individual server owners, and the collective decision they may or may not make.
I've always said a social system that isn't socialised is not a social system - I mean it's in the name! And the fediverse is really one of the first major attempts at doing that. Wether it lasts or not we're sure to learn a lot and if it fails, we can take those lessons and try again.
Do they really? I prefer quality over quantity. We don't really need a massive influx of users, just steady growth.
But quantity drives quality. Many big names join platforms specifically for the outreach they provide. That's by far the biggest reason that there's still so many big names on Twitter and co that haven't migrated.
Especially for the many people who need to make a living and thus need that outreach. The vast, vast majority of viewers will never pay for a picture they see on the internet or a streamer who makes them laugh. For a platform to be financially viable for creative types to make a living, they need a ton of viewers.
While generally true, moderator tools really aren't there yet on Lemmy. Growth will need to be more measured until work on that front catches up. There are also massive gaps that need filling in terms of the potential for spam. Keeping spam in check was challenging enough on reddit with various tools at our disposal - it'll be even more difficult here.
I say keep the flow coming, because the good shit eventually floats to the top.
The more people here, the more attractive it becomes to bigger-names, which will then bring their audience over.
Advertising requires money. Its a slippery slope that'll lead us down the same path as Reddit again. We're better than that.