How would you feel about awards on lemmy?

Fact is, the Lemmy ecosystem needs money to handle the growing server reqirements as more people migrate as well as the development cost of new features (I know Lemmy is OSS but the devs should still get some compensation for their effort).

Seeing how much some reddit users love awards so much that they cant stop giving money to Reddit to award posts protesting the api change, this could be a great way for users to voluntary support the ecosystem. It can be easily ignored by users not caring about them (clients could even add an option to hide them), but users liking the feature can go wild and this time the money goes to volunteers keeping this alive instead of greedy admins, power mods and investors.

Though there would be some big organization questions attached: attached:

  • Which server handles the payment? A centralized one, the one where the post was made or the one where the user giving the award account was created.
  • How will the money be shared between the Devs and the individual instances in a way that is fair but cant be abused easily.
murphys_lawyer,

Could we like, not immediately talk about monetisation 1 month after leaving reddit? If you want to support your instance host, you can ask for a way to donate.

lesnake, (edited )

The hard truth is that long term, we likely need another way besides donations to keep the ecosystem alive.

static,
static avatar

I would like to see some numbers first. Donations work fine for mastodon.

Edit : here are mastodon.world financials https://blog.mastodon.world/

lesnake, (edited )

Looks like donations work surprisingly well with the current userbase and current expenses. The projects on opencolective are doing quite well.

Lets just hope this stays that way for a while.

I doubt its sustainable that way forever though if more reddit users and subreddits migrate. So if donations arent enough anymore in the future, I hope they choose something like awards instead of flooding the site with ads, analytics or paywals.

static,
static avatar

So when scaling up

You expect that : costs per user rise and donations per user drop?

I expect that: costs per user drop, donations per user stay the same, and external subsidies rise.

lesnake,

Basically yes, but I also assume the cost per users drops/stays the same

I think the next ppl joining are mostly teens who dont consider donating,but would consider occasionally buying something like awards

I doubt external subsidies can cover the missing donations.

Edit: Also I assume ppl in their early 20s are more likely to buy awards than donate.

static, (edited )
static avatar

And even then there could be donated vs award servers.
I prefer to focus on the donated ones.

It was a bit mean/dishonest from me to frame costs for you.
my guess of dounations just does not match yours.

lesnake,

I assume you that awards are optional for each server.

How would you determine if awards are enabled? The server of the community or the server where the account was created?

static,
static avatar

You do not, awards do not propogate to other servers.

magic_lobster_party,

Donations seem to work fine for Wikipedia as well. Same with internet archive. We should not underestimate the willingness of people to support a good cause.

Pooptimist,

Maybe something like signals donator badge would be a better solution

567PrimeMover,
567PrimeMover avatar

I would love to see a social media network run under this model, and I think lemmy, kbin, etc are great candidates for that. The decentralized nature of the fediverse allows costs and user load to get spread out to other instances, vs. something centralized which concentrates all that on one org/person. I feel that makes a donation only system much more attainable

murphys_lawyer,

It’s almost like people are willing to spend money for a good cause, when they are not constantly being pressured and scammed into it.

Nollij,

This really needs to be higher.

Running a Mastodon or Lemmy server is surprisingly cheap. With some specific tweaks and rules (esp. hosting images and video elsewhere), it can get even cheaper.

If your only goal is to break even, then it’s amazingly easy. Roughly 1 of every 20 users contributing $1/month. Adjust the numbers as you see fit.

Or a single, non-datamined ad at the top of the page.

Spzi,

Or maybe some people just can’t imagine how this could work without being centered around money.

Lemmy has been around for years. New instances are popping up as new users come in. So far, I haven’t seen an instance suffering from lack of funds, but others being funded for months ahead, some even donating excess funds to Lemmy devs.

All while topics like these pop up every other day. For me, it looks like catastrophization. Seeking solutions for problems which do not exist (yet? Not even sure about that).

lesnake,

I dont expect a decentralised platform to be profitable and also think donations are better than in-app purchases.

But I dont want big instances to suddenly turn off because they cant afford it anymore or the development being behind so much we loose users to missing features.

Looking at the donation pages of lemmy instances there are enough donations for now but it is good to have a plan B for in case we get flooded by users not willing to donate so this platform survives long term. That plan B should be as least Invasive as possible,so no ads,analytics or paywall. Thats why I suggested something that is completely cosmetic.

Angry_Maple,

I think a good start before all of that would be for struggling instances to tell their user base that they are struggling.

Not going to lie, awards like that would probably make me start looking for another new platform again. I don’t want that part of reddit, personally. I want comments that are there to be there, not comments that are only there to get the most positive feedback. For me, doing this would take lemmy further away from being an open forum, and move it closer towards being a lame popularity contest. I can only see the same jokes so many times.

nxfsi,

I don’t want the comments section to look like the inner cabinet of the North Korean army

VanillaGorilla,

I like this comment. Let me award you the flaming golden sun of glory medal of the people.

Kichae,

Replace "rewards" with "emoji reacts" and "needs money to handle growing server requirements" with "appreciates your donations to help cover hosting costs" and I think you may be on to something.

Otakat,

The way that steam handles paid reactions seems fine to me.

Kichae,

Tying financial incentives to enabling bullshit is how you end up with bullshit-filled spaces.

If online communities are important to you, support online communities. If commercialized doo-dads and thingamajigs are what's important to you, Reddit already exists. You not only can have what you want, but you can see what it leads to.

DreadTowel,

Lemmy core devs are actually employed full time to work on lemmy.

canopylions,

What’s funding their salaries? Just donations?

DreadTowel,

See this post. The work is sponsored by the NLnet Foundation

flashmedallion,
@flashmedallion@lemmy.nz avatar

Just donate if you want to support your server.

Awards are special actions reserved for people who pay, that don’t improve the platform anyway. It’s enshittification.

Overzeetop,
Overzeetop avatar

It baffles me how people seem fixated on the gamification of a discussion and payment system, as if somehow we're not adults who can see that the servers cost money, they provide us value, and we should help defray the costs (directly, through donations/payments). Clear/transparent information on instance costs and available funding is all we really need. For the instance owners it would be nice to have some built in code to provide this as a common location so they can disseminate the info with as little additional effort as possible, ideally with hooks to several payment systems they can connect - esp given the global nature of the platform.

Coelacanth,
@Coelacanth@feddit.nu avatar

as if somehow we’re not adults who can see that the servers cost money, they provide us value, and we should help defray the costs (directly, through donations/payments).

I really wish this was how humans worked.

But then I remember people will regularly drive on state-maintained roads to their government subsidized free public healthcare, get treated the same day and then go home and write an angry internet post about how we have to cut taxes.

Womble,

Because, sadly, it works. Humans are social animals and gaining and displaying status is hard wired into us. You might not be interested in status in this way (but there are likely others just as irrational that you do), but enough people are such that this would likely generate a lot more money than just donations.

sethw,

Appealing to and reinforcing toxic aspects human nature is always a shitty argument. Whatever we're trying to do here let's not be regressive

ttmrichter,
@ttmrichter@lemmy.world avatar

I think making likes and dislikes public is bad enough. You can probably guess how that applies to “gold”.

NENathaniel,

I’d like the idea if they either can’t be purchased, or the purchase goes toward your Instance’s hosting fees

Corkyskog,

I don’t love the awards from Reddit, but I would like to see something like this (unpopular opinion, I know). Instances need funding.

I don’t care about what the awards are themselves, I care about the way the funding works. I would love to see the funds split in a two tiered system.

Here is a general example of my idea. When a award is purchased it gets split into two pots. One pot is a general pot that gets disbursed to those running the instances based on whatever metrics and intervals agreed upon. The other part gets assigned to the reward itself. So in this example let’s say an award costs one dollar. 90 cents would go to the pool to be split, the other 10 cents would be tied to the award. So if you award a post on an instance it goes specifically to that instance itself. Instances could even set a percent split with community moderators of the 10 cents. That way you could fund moderators (if that ever becomes needed)

You could even split part of the award reward with the commentor assigned to it… but that puts a weird feeling in my gut and I feel like it is a bad idea to monetize the content itself.

There is a lot you could do with this and a lot more would need to be fleshed out, so I am just thinking out loud.

samokosik,
@samokosik@lemmy.world avatar

I have never used it on reddit. I have always found them useless

IDatedSuccubi,

I used them a couple of times, I like them; I use them when the post I REALLY like doesn’t have much upvotes. Like when I see post with 24 upvotes that deserves 400+ I give it gold, so the user will still feel happy.

Disclaimer though, I received all my points from winning a big sub contest, I didn’t ever pay for them.

fujiwara,
@fujiwara@lemmy.zip avatar

I’ve never wanted anything less in my life.

alfredalpaca,

Nothing is free on the internet. Its high time we accept that and choose to consciously and directly support services we use. It’s just cleaner that way. It’s also the only way to keep the internet free(free as in freedom).

Think of it like donating to Wikipedia - once I was able to give back, I started giving back. Soon, I hope to start contributing to lemmy OSS.

This is not even taking into consideration the practical issues with awards like the amount of dev and effort needed to create and manage a payment and “donation distribution” system.

Nima,
@Nima@lemmy.world avatar

Please no rewards. This is not reddit. I think a donation system would be much better way to go about it.

Let the content and conversations just happen. It’s more organic that way.

Tronn4,

No awards please

jacktherippah,

I don’t want to see award speeches here on Lemmy. For example: OMG! THANK YOU FOR THE GOLD KIND STRANGER!!!1111

pancakes,
@pancakes@sh.itjust.works avatar

I agree.

EDIT: WOW 1 LIKE??? THANK YOU STRANGER I’VE NEVER GOTTEN THIS MANY LIKES BEFORE!1!!1

Alula,

I don’t believe that awards should exist on comments or posts, but i do want the devs to gain some money off of this.

The best choice would probably be for them to set up ways to donate to them in my opinion .

warmaster,

The thing is, nobody donates. But they love their lucky charms. It’s just a dark pattern.

Alula,

Who knows what’ll happen if they actually do implement something like it

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