Why do instances not run ads? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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It probably goes against the philosophy or whatever of FOSS or Lemmy itself, but why not be a little evil so that you can actually sustain yourself? Donations can bring us far, but small non-intrusive ads can be a bliss in the skies for the people actually hosting the instance. Especially if there are millions of users uploading thousands of images and videos. This is extremely expensive.

Is running ads really that taboo?

EDIT: some people seem not to get the point of "millions of users", which presumably includes non-techies that do not use adblockers. I mean that without ads (or mining?), no instance would be able to scale to the point where it can compete with Reddit for example. If you were to want that. And not for profit, but solely for sustainability.

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[-] [email protected] 67 points 2 years ago

Nothing stops them from doing so.

But I don't think that's the path you'll see super often. Most people enthusiast enough to host their own instance and open it to others probably disagree with ads, and users are very likely going to reject them.

Plus, wether we like it or not, Lemmy is majoritarily used by people with a lot of tech knowledge - the exact same group you'd expect to be running ad blocking software.

But if federated social networks keep growing to the point they could rival a platform like Reddit, for sure some ad supported instances will coexist with user-funded ones.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I'd like the idea of certain instances becoming so large that it attracts the larger populous and becomes one of the major platforms. That is if it remains to be open source and federated.

(Edit: or just a community)

Why is background crypto mining not used? If it's openly communicated and is an opt-in option, people might prefer that over donation or ads.

[-] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago

I would much rather traditional ads than crypto mining. I don't want Kbin or Lemmy to become environmentally unfriendly electricity sinks.

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this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023

15 points (56.2% liked)

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