1y ago

So how long until the Fediverse is monetized?

I'm fairly new and don't 100% understand it yet, but instances are run on servers that require money. Are we heading towards seeing ads or subscriptions to raise funds instead of relying on donations to cover overhead?

Especially with the influx of new users. Hardware upgrades are needed.

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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
- Sponsors want something in return though, surely?
  
  Just a shoutout on the main website or github. Not much else, they tip in to support the project.
  
  This might work for now, but I'm skeptical how well this would work in the long run. Do those company pay a monthly fee to be there? What happens when there's a hundred companies on that list? What happens if a company pays a substantial amount to be there and threatens to stop paying if xyz doesn't happen?
  
  Just like there's Lemmy and Kbin that powers the "threadiverse" / reddit-like portion of the fediverse, Mastodon is only one software that enables micro-blogging like experiences. There's Pleroma, Misskey and many more. And of course there's always the possibility for more to be developed over time.
  Of Mastodon there's likely hundreds of so-called "forks" out there. Since it is open source, people can take that source code, and host their own version of the project. This means they can make their own changes, include changes by others, remove features they don't like, and so on.
  Mastodon is not just run by a handful of people owned by a corporation, forced to work for them. Large parts of the project are contributed by volunteers, which can jump ship to another implementation as soon as they feel like the one they've contributed to is not acting in the interest of users.
  Admins which actually host Mastodon instances get to decide when to update to a newer version, or whether they want to use a fork that includes the features they like (which the "official" Mastodon project has not (yet) included) or anti-features that might've been put there due to pressure from outside (possible but less likely).
  The power here is in the hands of users and admins. We just have to be careful not to let a company like Google or Facebook/Meta take control over a substantial portion of the fediverse. See also: How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse)
  
  I do agree with most of your points, except for one.
  Mastodon is not just run by a handful of people owned by a corporation, forced to work for them.
  Yes, for now. What happens when it requires so much administration and development that someone needs to manage it? Eventually, it will get big enough that its required to be a company. You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
  
  Yes and Mastodon itself is a registered non-profit organization. There's a few people they're able to pay to work on the projects, thanks to sponsors and donations. But there's a lot more contributors (over 800). I think the people doing valuable work on FOSS projects have a lot of opportunity to work elsewhere if they feel like they're being made to do things antithetical to their values. Not to mention the amount of noise they could make to expose the project and its shady goals, if that were the case. Things do work differently for FOSS projects than your average for-profit investor-driven project.
  
  For many people, myself included, paying $10 a month for some VC schmuck to buy another pina coloda while he’s resting on the beach smoking a Cuban cigar laughing about how much money he made from exploitation is a no-way. On the contrary, paying $10 once every few months to cover hosting costs for a service we all enjoy using and is not misusing our funds is something a lot are happy to do.
  When I purchase something or subscribe to a service (the only subscription services I have are servers I rent sooo..) I think twice about whether I wanna spend this money because I can find a loophole around it, donating to keep my instance alive is something I’m ready to do.
  
  And that's really the only sustainable way things like this can exist. The Internet has been having it's free lunch for so long we've forgotten how to buy our own.
  
  I'd say it's more that we've been paying out the nose in the form of offering up our data and digital autonomy, and by allowing not only the Internet but our societies at large to degrade and polarize. We've paid dearly for our 'free' services, in the case of the US with everything from our reproductive rights to our connections with our own families and communities.
  I'd much rather pay the price of an extra latte now and then for real internet communities than deal with actual Nazis and orbital Teslas for some shitty undermoderated ad feeds infested with trolls, AI, and literal societal saboteurs on the payrolls of Putin and Winnie the Pooh.
- Good to know!

490 comments