No Stupid Questions

The fediverse is not a single database or server. It's a protocol and standard that's distributed by design. The fediverse as a whole cannot be centrally monetized, just like email can't be monetized. A single provider could potentially choose to try to monetize either by requiring a subscription or showing ads, exactly like email providers do, but if you ever feel like they've stopped providing a good service you can just switch to another instance just like you can switch to another email provider.

Unlike a centralized service like Reddit, you're not locked into a monopoly. Switching instances does not lock you out of the system as a whole, just like you can still receive email if you switch to another provider. With Reddit you can only access the platform through Reddit because it's a closed source centralized monopoly.

One thing the fediverse seems to lack as far as I can tell is a way to link accounts, like how you can set up forwarding with email, which helps you switch providers. But the protocol and standard is still being developed so maybe that's something that can happen in the future

No ads, no tracking, just donations. The model proved itself when twitter went to shit and a big influx of users came to mastodon, it all worked out.

The big difference with Lemmy is that it's not really a service, it's a open protocol and standard, like email, or http. The service itself is provided by distributed instances that adhere to the protocol. Like those protocols, no one company has been able to get a monopoly on it. Some have taken over a lot of it, like Google with Gmail, or cloudflare, but if you don't want to work with them there are a ton of other options you can go with, and you will not be locked out of the system if you do.

Reddit was a centralized closed source system so if you don't have a Reddit account then you are locked out of the system completely.

Lemmy is decentralized so no one instance has or can gain a monopoly. If you want to break ties with one instance you can just switch to another one and still participate with it and the rest of the fediverse.

Not only does that give you choice in a worst case scenario, it also keeps all the instances on their toes because they don't have dictatorial control over their users.

Spez's fatal miscalculation was that he thought he had user lock in, but unlike other social networks where it's your only option to keep in contact with your real life friends, or it's the only platform your favorite creator posts on, they had neither. Almost all accounts were not connected to your real life and posts were mostly links to other platforms. Very few creators had Reddit as their sole posting platform. The interactions were ephemeral and superficial. Dropping Reddit was the easiest service I ever had to drop.

The concept of the Fediverse is horizontal rather than vertical growth - i.e. More smaller instances rather than increasing the capacity of the larger ones. We're also seeing that Lemmy currently only scales to a certain degree. Right now, most instances are either covered by their admin because they're so small that the cost is manageable or instances are setting up donations.

It's conceivable that a business would set up an instance and charge for it - but I think it unlikely. A year town the road, though, who knows?

The Fediverse as a whole cannot be monetised, censored, or taken over by hostile entities.

Individual instances can, but they are only part of the whole and not the whole thing, so instances of Elon Musk or Steve Huffman simply cannot happen on the same scale.

As a fun fact of the day, Wikipedia subsists entirely on charity, so it's very possible to run things using this model if you provide enough value and transparency for people.

Wikipedia is probably the most important thing on the internet fight now. It also needs some amount of servers, many crawlers scan it daily, I assume its a shitton of users and logins and API hits and what not. And still it survives on donations alone.

Eventually lemmy is not a streaming services with videos and and a lot of bandwidth. Its just text and people connecting. So I assume you dont need massive servers and shit.

Depends how successful we are in fending off Zuck from trying to muscle his way in. That's probably the first challenge.

Otherwise this is a non-issue, as there will simply always be both kinds. Nothing is stopping you from simply Self-Hosting your own Lemmy server.

How many hobbiests running miniature train sets in their garage have monetized those train sets? How many backyard gardeners sell their crops.

In most cases people who choose to develop and administrate an instance of their own are largely just hobbiests of another type. Sure it costs them some money. Many hobbies cost money, it doesn't stop people from building things or growing things for fun.

Realistically every instance can monetize in whatever way they see fit but I highly doubt this'll be a thing. Mastodon is way bigger and more expensive than Lemmy and it runs just fine through donations. No reason why the same won't work here.

Lemmy itself is also likely to follow in Mastodon's path by getting money from sponsorships and fundraisers. See https://www.investopedia.com/how-mastodon-makes-money-7482865

I’m going to tell you a secret…. Yes.

All those things could happen. Some people could run a site that has ads. Some people could run a site that charges a membership. Some sites could have a Patreon membership. Some sites could do subscriptions….

And some sites could be completely free.

The funny thing is, because of the federation, no one will be harmed. Let’s say I startup a site and all I do is pass through the cost of the site to each user. No profit, just what it costs to maintain the server is shared among the members.

Is that unreasonable?

There will probably eventually be some commercial Lemmy sites. I honestly think it would be awesome if large game studios, and software companies, and anyone else who has need for a forum, made their own federated Lemmy instances as their official support forums.

Besides all the discussion of nonprofits and donations, fedi server hosts have way less overhead. They're not generally trying to profit, so they only need to break even (or run a deficit small enough to deal with out of pocket). A corporation is trying to give 6 or 7 digit salaries to CEOs and/or shareholders. So they need to extract more than the cost of hosting.

Give it 15 years.

I've been online since 1990; 10-15 years seems to be the maximum time a community can live without shitting itself over greed or something new and better coming along to scoop up users.

That said, things like Usenet and IRC still technically exist... They're just niche now. The way this shit works is more like those, so it will likely never fully disappear.

As soon as Lemmy instances are unsustainable out of pure interest for the concept of the Fediverse. I doubt there will be subscriptions, first it'll be donations, and then some instances may have ads. It's an inevitable that both will happen (either on the same instance, or some instances opting for donations to stay up, and others opting for ads to stay up). No one can run the servers necessary for this platform out of pure charity; the bill for the Fediverse is going to be due someday, and it has to be paid.

Some people may monitize by having paid for subscriptions, like email.

Others will offer free services with banner ads on their site, like email.

Others will offer the service as a way to drive traffic and adoption of other services they offer, like email.

Others will run them at their own cost because they want to, like email.

Companies will run their own instances, like email.

Notice a trend here. For all of you who think the Fediverse is doomed because "ermegurd not platform, is gonna fail". Umm, email?

if any corporation tries to get in on it, you can count on them trying to monetize it

It's already monetised. Just click on the links under Donations in the main sidebar or straight to the OpenCollective page for a glimpse. We pay for it with our money. That's how we know we're not the product.

The Fediverse SHOULD allow monetization and they don't yet. As per Mark Bayliss:

The problem here is that despite these large and escalating costs, a significant part of the fediverse is intrinsically hostile to anything other than charity or goodwill as a basis for running a server, due to hostility to capitalism as an abstract or just on a general point of principle regarding how web services should be funded. Any instance that runs advertisements to its users is likely to be blocked by any others purely on those grounds. Some instances have tried to introduce subscription fees for joining and have been blocked as a result. Ownership by a corporate entity or accepting funding from one is also likely to wind up with a block.

I'm not saying to commercialize the entirety of the Fediverse but if you want it to actually compete with Twitter and Reddit and Tumblr then you need to open it up further.

For me, never. I will always move to a server that is run by donations.

Because there will always be rebels running small to medium size instances based off of donations. It was the very first thing to happen at the birth of the internet, and will continue to happen today. Will there be a few major instances that eat up the majority of the fedi? Yeah, probably, but the design of the fedi is that the experience of decentralized social media will stay the same regardless of what's going on with instances of the network.

The fediverse is the coolest thing that could happened, freedom is what all people should seek for, creating their own spaces and not supporting corporations that only want to make money out of people's lives, data, attention, mental health, etc ...

It's better to support the instance you are in with donations for sure.

I think that Lemmy Gold, Silver & Bronze are inevitable, with say a 90/10 cut to instance/lemmy-devs.

It would be best if the developers and the biggest instances agree on a standard payment system to implement into the Lemmy UI.

I've already donated to my instance as it's a regional one, I didn't buy Reddit Gold, but Lemmy Gold/Silver/Bronze is appealing to me given the money goes to a much smaller local group.

As long as a company can't outright buy the whole network or something like that, I don't think it could get fucked over in the same way that something like twitter or tumblr can.

People could monetize individual instances. They can't monetize the whole thing because its open source software.

I'm kind of shocked how many young kids don't get this.

I may be a minority. But I would gladly join a server that is paid and I get stability, but also a better stronger fight against the inevitable onslaught of shit - in return.

Honestly, we really don't know. mastondon.world and lemmy.world are run by donations and that's worked so far. Ruud and his folks have been pretty upfront about their finances.

The general temperament I've gotten is people around here are opposed to a corporate like monetization. I agree with that. Usually, at least what I've observed, is that when a service monetizes it becomes enshitified.

We'll find out eventually what happens.