Reddit migrator here (shocking, I know)
Just wondering because I found out about all this yesterday and just realized the ammount of independent servers, but no sign of any ads or sponsors. So… is it all based on donations?
Also don’t just lurk, if you know you should answer because lemmy only counts users who posted or commented as active users.
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Yup. You can be profitable without expecting to get rich. The insane corporate expectations of “20% growth every year forever” directly leads to the enshitification of everything it touches, especially social media.
Why does everything have to be for profit?
This is the real question we have to ask ourselves. We really need to move away from looking at the internet as just a resource to extract money from, and instead see it through a social lense again. Look what late stage capitalism has done to our digital, social gathering places. Almost everything has become a product that needs to be profitable, to compete for attention and to extract as much data from users as possible and discourse has suffered greatly from it. I mean billions are donated to content creators simply because people want to contribute. Why stop there? We can shape the internet the way we want if we simply contribute and put our heads together. We don’t have to make a profit. That’s our strength.
I like this take.
Due to life circumstances, I basically live on the internet, and have since the late 90s. My first comment on here was about how I support socialized social media.
I want to go back to a time when I could actually talk to random people, and have meaningful discourse, even if it isn’t as big of a community or as content-filled. I want my social space to be interactive, not passive.
Profit-seeking models push for passive consumption rather than actual meaningful engagement. I’d much rather have a non-profitable platform that people keep alive because they want the same thing I do. I’ll donate to it, as long as it stays that way.
I think they are asking “how are things paid for” not necessarily “are they making tons of excese profit”
Profit is the money leftover after everything has been paid for, though. All profit is, by definition, excess.
You’re probably right and the OP is just confusing terms, but I think it’s an important distinction to make.
It doesn’t have to be profitable. Especially for people that already have computers running 24/7 and good Internet, a Lenny server is just another process they run on their machine. Admin/mod duties would probably be the hardest part.
They’re not - Some instances have a clearer funding structure than others. I picked Lemmy.world in part because they have a clear source of donations.
https://opencollective.com/mastodonworld/donate?interval=oneTime&amount=20&name=&legalName=&email=
The open collective link goes to Mastadon world. Is it related to Lemmy.world? I look on lemmy.world website, and I don’t see a clear link to funding.
Run by the same people. Donations to that link are used for both.
Some have raised concerns about wanting to fund one but not the other (e.g. earmark their donation to Lemmy but not Mastodon) but the admins said they weren’t gonna do that yet.
I’m pretty sure Lemmy has been designed specifically so it can’t me monetized. If you try to place ads people can just switch to another instance. If you try to split off from the fediverse I’m pretty sure there’s enough data on other instances in order to clone your server along with its content (and mind that you don’t own the copyright for posts made by users).
I would go as far as to say the point is that it’s not for profit. Profit incentive ruins everything, most of all online services and platforms.
I think it’s more than just “not for profit” - there was actual effort to make this platform as difficult to monetize as possible (probably as a lesson learned from Reddit lol). Let’s begin with the code - it’s under AGPL, which means you can’t set up a public Lemmy instance without making its code public. This prevents you from creating an improved version and keeping it to yourself to gain an advantage over other instances. Second, the fediverse means that it’s less likely for a single instance to become so big that it can unfederate itself without consequences, and while you’re federated you can’t really place ads - people would just view your community on another instance.
I don’t agree - while you could copy it, if an instance gathered a large user base and had some well-implemented quality of life features, there’s nothing stopping them from putting ads on it and I’d guess that most users would continue to use that instance. If it has quality content, they already have an account, and it has compelling improvements over other instances, I can’t imagine that some unobtrusive ads would bother people enough to go to a clone of that instance and create another account.
Sure, it could be done, and ad blockers are common enough, but I don’t think well-placed ads would cause some mass exodus. I’d even be okay with it if it’s in the name of paying the server bills for such an instance.
They’re not, and profit isn’t the reason people run Lemmy instances. In fact, avoiding the problems that arise when human communication is capitalized upon is a driving theme behind open source software and federated social media.
Its been so long since ive been on a part of the internet like this, it used to be almost all like this, now its almost all a buisness.
Right. I’m loving this. It is a huge breath of fresh air. Obviously the people hosting Lemmy.world have to pay for this though. If they put out a subscription that was minimal in cost I would pony up even now with the jank and all. This place is worth investing my time and energy into I feel.
Profit might not be the point, but it is going to cost time and resources to run an instance. Unless the admin is just planning on paying for everyone’s ability to use Lemmy on their instance out of their own pocket, ads or subscriptions may be necessary. And depending on how much time and effort goes into keeping it up, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for them to want to make a profit on it so they feel like it’s worth the effort.
I’d hate for an instance to blow up in popularity only for the admin to decide it isn’t worth the time/effort/cost and shuts it down.
The funny thing is that not all human endeavours actually need to be profitable for them to exist. It’s perfectly fine and normal for people to be generous and provide services for the community for nothing in return and for some of those in the community to help out too.
It don’t need to be profitable, just sustainable and us humans are greedy.
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I’m going to split a hair here: any endeavour needs to be financially sustainable for it to continue existing. So yes, in terms of future growth of federated platforms, i am mildly concenrned that there may not be enough people willing to put in the work and expense of maintaining an instance just so free. If you imagine a future where the fediverse has Twitter or Instagram levels of users, it’s pretty likely that instance owners will want to monetize as much as possible, and then what happens?
it’s pretty likely that instance owners will want to monetize as much as possible, and then what happens?
why is that “pretty likely”? People have been running services 24/7 for years, sometimes out of pocket, sometimes with basic community support. It does not have to be profitable, as you said, it has to be sustainable, which is vastly different.
it’s pretty likely that instance owners will want to monetize as much as possible
I disagree. It’s find to have hobbies that don’t make money. Running a lemmy instance can be that.
Running any decently sized instance quickly turns from a hobby to at least a part-time job. A thing that you can’t just quit whenever is not a hobby and we should be mindful of that.
Any Lemmy/fediverse instance could come up with a localized monetization scheme for people that browse through it, but it wouldn’t affect other instances (or if they were injecting ads into feeds, they’ll just get blocked by everyone else), but for the most part, it’s got more of an IRC server vibe, no monetization needed when community volunteers are plentiful and the barrier to entry is low. Eventually ‘big boys’ like Lemmy.world will want a more formal and reliable way of paying for their server and bandwidth needs beyond primarily unsolicited donations ($ and time) by volunteers.
These are not profit generating services, they are community services. For now.
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i contribute to patreons of lemmy.world and the developers of lemmy. hopefully there’s makes enough of us to make this financially viable
Same :)
Things can be valuable without being profitable. A hug from someone you love does not generate any profit but is still a good thing that should exist. Likewise, a community resource like a Lemmy instance does not need to justify it’s existence by being profitable. It can simply exist as something that people get value from. The fact that we often lose sight of this is a result of living in a capitalistic society that over-emphasises the value of something producing profit and underemphasises any other possible value. As for the implied question of, how does a Lemmy instance get the money to pay the costs required to run it? That’s going to vary from one instance to another and how that money is raised should be a factor in which one you sign up to and which ones you connect with. In the case of Lemmy.world, it is, afaik, presently (and likely in the future) run as a non-profit for it’s own inherent value and is funded by user donations. A big point of federated communities is to allow those communities to be able to operate for their own benefit, rather than be reliant on commercial investment that will later create a tension of different incentives.
I don’t think a hug was a good example, for the exact reason you mentioned in the second half of your comment. A hug does not cost anything to give, other than a small amount of time. Everyone gets time for free, until they don’t anymore.
Servers cost money AND time, both to get and run the equipment. Not to mention regular maintenance as hard drives especially don’t last forever. It’s easier to do something unprofitable for the sake of it being a valuable thing, such as picking up trash on the side of the road. But most people can’t just give shoes to the homeless because it’s a good thing, simply because that costs money and time, which the average person does not have an exorbitant amount of money to give away.
To me, the question is moreso how do lemmy instances get the money to exist, and OP just used the wrong word. Which as you mentioned, through donations. I also think it would be a pretty neat feature to have a setting where you can enable ads (off by default) to further support the instance without having to directly enter your credit card information.
To me, the question is moreso how do lemmy instances get the money to exist
Yes it is.
That is not the same thing as making a profit.
I think this may be the wrong question. I am the administrator of a reverse engineered PS3 video game server, so it’s illegal for me to make a profit or any kind of revenue or donations from that platform. However, I maintain it for thousands of users simply because I and others enjoy it and want it to exist. That’s not a sustainable model for a business or for running something as gigantic as reddit, but it’s what I want and enjoy, and for right now it’s affordable, and I’m happy with that.
People like you make the internet a better place :)
It isn’t atm
It will probably never be. Because it is never intended to be a platform for profit, but a (finally, real) place for everyone to hang out. In turn, everyone contribute content, money, code, and/or time to keep this place alive.
It is really pretty grim that we are conditioned to think that our town square NEEDS to benefit a corporate and its millionaire shareholders.
The internet was not designed for profit, and it don’t have to be used for profit as well.
It is really pretty grim to think that we are conditioned to think that our internet NEEDS to benefit a corporate and its millionaire shareholders.
I never thought about it like that but you’re absolutely right. It’s a shame everything is about money. But oh well, I guess such is capitalism
Not just about making money, you gotta make enough money over what you take in that rich people can make significant returns too. Simply being profitable is not even enough, because if your investors find better returns elsewhere, that’s where their money goes.
true.
I’m donating $5 to the Lemmy devs and $5 to Lemmy.world currently on patreon.
I know you probably have seen a lot of answers from others already and my answer would probably be the same as others (for obvious reasons) but I am going to answer anyway because you told me not to lurk. Please note that I am not an expert (or even somebody who knows much about business) so don’t expect my answers to even be half correct.
If by profitable you mean “not making a loss” then probably yes as long as if there are enough donations to cover the expense of running the server.
But if by profitable you mean “making enough money to be sustainable long term” then my answer would be most likely not because it’s not designed to make money (unlike ahem…certain platform)
