POLL: Suppose sponsors supported your local Fediverse instance in return for a set number of ads per hour (20 or less), and never with an algorithm positioning them. And the ads stay local to that community and don’t federate.
Is this a reasonable proposition to offset the costs of communities?
@danhon Thanks for appreciating the poll. I was somewhat astonished to not find any when I looked. But of course, looking for specific things in the fediverse is still a fool’s errand.
@danhon Yeah, it’s a growing club. We need more open and platform agnostic applications. The platforms have too much power now. I want content to actually be king again.
@wtwagg@danhon I said in the poll that ads would presumably not federate. At least, not at the default level. Many federations of instances might want to opt into it. Flexibility should be paramount.
@wtwagg That sounds extreme to me. Ads predated and will survive X, and were once essential to journalism. There are many models. The goal is to find one that best serves the greatest number of users (not VCs, investors, and sponsors).
@shoq
Intrigued by how split this is -- currently almost even across the board! I voted yes it'd be reasonable. I donate monthly to my instance, but I know many others aren't in a financial position to. Would at least love a way to optionally enable this type of ad injection to support the server!
On the one side, an additional model to help people finance their instance is good. And tech-ads on an tech-instance or RPG-ads on an RPG-instance even have value.
But then again I can't imagine this working good in the long run. Getting and curating sponsors yourself is work and may be very hard for small instances. So there will probably emerge external ad-services... which will lead to similar structures as the ad-industry now. 😐
@shoq I voted unsure. My instance is one of the larger ones and it would be interesting to know how many contribute to their admn. I’m guessing it’s not a high percentage, mainly because users have always looked a social media as a free thing, I wish it was different. Running an instance takes money and time, if we don’t want ads people should be kicking in $.
@NorCal_Lynne@shoq I don’t want ads but I’m ok if another instance has ads I don’t see. I don’t want my existing instance to convert to ads and make me move.
Yeah, I suppose I would be fine with other people getting ads as long as I don't see them. Ad-free social media should be a free public service subsidized by local and national funding.
I think ads should be in the real world and on commercial websites. Can we separate the commercial web from the personal web?
@drdrowland Any totally subsidized instance would have more rules than most would be comfortable with. But most peopel are okay with hybrids anyway. NPR, for example, has plenty of ads now, while it still receives much subsidy and paid sponsor announcements.
@shoq Sounds a bit like how adverts in media used to work: “Buy a page in the magazine with the readers you want to reach” is, at least in theory, similar to “buy an ad ona fediverse server with users you want to reach”.
@anders that’s the obvious model right? We’ve just been so convinced by big Tech that only algorithmically driven sales can work? Good old fashioned display ads can work too. It just means the advertiser has to work a little harder to know where his customer is.
FAFO: You can do anything you want, but people can just walk away any time they want.
I'd like to see automatic software support for cost sharing of the hosting of an instance by the users of an instance, perhaps with proportionality considered.
And if contributions weren't enough, then maybe cover shortfall with advertising.
Like, post a lot, pay your share: no ads; pay less, then you view an ad to post until you're even. View a lot, pay less: private ads for you until you're even.
@rpardee I deliberately didn’t want to get bogged down in details. I don’t have a specific model in mind yet. There are many ways to skin a cat on the internet. What matters is getting a general sense of what people might agree to if the goal appealed to them.
@shoq@rpardee For me personally, on a small instance I would totally be in favor of ads on my instance but I'm a sporadic Masto checker so the interval matters. Like I remember a time when the number of ads I saw on Instagram felt reasonable and now it feels distinctly unreasonable. I understand why it feels boggy but just explaining why I voted no but it's a pretty soft no. And I donate to my instance.
@shoq I'm voting no because I don't believe the Fediverse instance owners have the right to choose an ad based model without first working with their users to fund the instances some other way, rather than passively waiting for voluntary donations.
@aka_quant_noir The whole rationale would depend on there being an ad based alternative available in the first place. Users can’t choose between something and nothing. Even a modest community can cost thousands of dollars a month to operate. It guarantees that only the dogged or endowed will run big communities.
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