Administered by:
This is a question the entire fediverse needs to wrangle with. On the one hand, advertising has had an unquestionably negative impact on the Internet. On the other, these services DO cost money to run. While in a perfect world donations would cover everything, the reality is most users of the platforms/communities aren't paying to support them. If we don't all figure this out, it's going to be hard for the fediverse to scale. Would love to hear ideas in the comments!
https://fortune.com/2022/11/28/twitter-advertisers-elon-musk-mastodon-ads-brands/
Honestly, no services or struggling services is preferable to endless corporate exploitation.
But I absolutely understand that it's not fun to be the one struggling to keep things afloat day after day.
My final conclusion is that I'd rather have a weird, fringe, unpopular #Fediverse than just another "slightly less awful than the other guy" online service.
But that doesn't mean it should be a false dichotomy, either.
The real question is, are people in "charge" like @Gargron will stay the course or give in to cash out --
That's *NOT* a dig against anyone, nor an assertion or assumption that people will crumple and choose self over other. It's just a simple realization that the temptation *will* be there.
REMEMBER #MAKERBOT. ;)
@tilvids even Twitter struggled to make a profit. It’s a lot of data to process.
@tilvids i didnt use Twitter. its been long time since i used Facebook, also didnt use Instagram or anyrhing smilar to these.
Why i am here? Because mastodon seems have good quality.
In short, that is not my problem:).
@tilvids Plenty of platforms did just fine without/before internet ads, and there will still be plenty of options without them. Just because it's the most profitable way to run an internet business doesn't make it necessary.
I anticipate there will be paid Mastodon instances with better performance. Some will take donations. Some will operate as part of another profitable business.
@tilvids While I can understand the position of having ads that do not track as "not as bad", I am strongly against having ads at all. Advertising is always sold (hah) as an "it does not hurt that much and helps very much", I think this is very short-sighted. Once you have ads, soon you you will have to present numbers about "click-through" and "engagement" and all that toxic corpo-speak, to keepbup the price of your place. Which in turn, as certain...
@tilvids ... night follows day, you have to find ways to increase said numbers. At that point, you do not run a service for people, but for corporations. Its all startup fate ever.
Take for instance the World Cup: is it expensive because its so much hassle, or is it expensive because advertisers drove the process high? Why do you have to pay for the right to broadcast it? Because you can shove adverts into it. Shouldn't be Fifa paying for getting it broadcasted? Why should it ...
@tilvids ... to bring it tobpeople to want to see it? The cost of events like that are some sort of circle deduction: its expensive because you can put ads on it, and because you can put ads on it, its expensive (ofc its expensive to have a team broadcasting it, but thats a while other thing). So, if you touch adverts, soon your instance will be expensive because of them, not because of traffic and such. No to adverts, not here, not anywhere. Public money should be considered.
@tilvids There is a " being expensive" missing at the start of the last toot.
@tilvids Honestly I think brands are probably just going to go back to #Twitter eventually. Once the press attention has moved on, I bet twitter will re-ban/deboost enough nazis (and also leftists and queers and poc) that brands will be willing to come back. If Musk wants twitter to be profitable, it will have to shift to be more sponsorship-focused imho
@tilvids I would suggest members-only instances. That way the members pay for the running of the infrastructure while gaining a right to an expectation of QoS and some security that their instance isn’t going to go poof. When you allow advertisers the users are the product not the customer.
@tilvids My own gripe with #adTech is its #privacy violations.
Because #ActivityPub does not track its users, I do not have problems with #ad here.
@tilvids this bothers me too. old-time farmers could grow all they and their neighbors needed but always had a #cashCrop or #marketGarden that was sold to buy stuff. instances need to identify a sponsor or something. large organization, red cross, libraries, churches and governments etc that have an income stream need to #sponsor the technical folks that do the work. instance owners are like care givers to the internet.
@tilvids it’s a faulty assumption that the fediverse needs to wrangle with a scale problem, outside of questions about the technical implementation of the protocols underpinning it. individual instances might choose to chase scale in whatever fashion they prefer, and either have a plan or careen into what happens when expectations meet the lack of a plan, but the network itself? nah. that’s part of the beauty of federation.
@tilvids For those with Apple devices here’s one way around the paywall: https://apple.news/A5nbvK7w_Tn-ppfCMS_ZC8w
@tilvids Expect to see a life-cycle not unlike that of the web, heavily academic and technical to start, commercialized as soon as folks with money figure out a way to turn a profit. Enjoy this golden moment while it lasts.
@tilvids I am good with ads but I don't want them to be targeted to me beyond the instance I'm on.
Good, quiet and tasteful ads catered to the instance they are posted on would be okay, IMHO.
Of course, I'd rather no ads at all but we have to be realistic.
@fssofdeath @tilvids This, this is the solution. Instance manually reviewd ads. They are displayed to only the users instance even of looking at federated sources.
It does seem like a civilized and polite way of doing things.
The nice thing is, most instances will probably need in the hundreds to thousands of dollars a month, not the tens of millions of dollars a month, to reach a point of equilibrium. Should scale well enough.
I think it's important to keep in mind that people are willing to pay for a good product. A lot of #fediverse instances are running on donations and for the most part it seems like a lot of people are willing to pitch in on a well run instance, especially ones with good governance as well.
We have to remember, some of the biggest properties on the internet like #WikiMedia (parent of #Wikipedia) solely runs on donations.
@tilvids it's a dilemma. Sort of ironic that I can't read the full article because it's behind a pay wall.
@tilvids - Brands and ads have a place on social media. But where and how much reach they get needs to be strongly protected in the interest of the viewer/consumer.
Ads are fine as long as I'M the once in control of what they show me and how much of data they get (preferably none...)
It can be mitgated by smartly closing regstration and splitting load across servers.
A advantage twitter does *not* have
@tilvids Personally, I am not bothered by tasteful ads, but what I do care about is how they're placed. TV and radio, particularly in North America, has been subsidized by adverts for many decades. What changed with the internet is the extent to which personal data is mined and used to target the ads. Traditional broadcasters have done research on basic aggregate demographic data to sell ads and that worked well for a long time.
@tilvids Additionally, this may be one thing made better by the rise of community-based fediverse instances. Take infosec.exchange for example. Just looking at the name tells you the type of people there. If you cater to that audience, and that instance somehow placed ads, you know where to spend your advertising budget without having to invade people's privacy.
@testdevice @tilvids The software as far as I can tell makes no attempt to glean any actionable data from your activity, so there’s not really anything to get out of it aside from what you put in.
@testdevice @kirkman @tilvids I'd say this is a pretty good prediction, and sold data would probably resemble an easy-to-use dump of public data (everyone's posts, who follows whom), but with an email address attached to link it to other data sources. Knowing that someone with email address X follows, e.g., hiking/camping accounts would be valuable info for people who sell outdoor gear. It's even information you can already view on public profiles, but advertisers would pay for it in bulk.
@testdevice @kirkman @tilvids There's also some private info, like Mastodon search/view history that an instance could record into a database pretty easily, if an operator wanted to.
I think this is why stated privacy policies are important!
@kirkman I think that's a pretty insightful take. One thing I've considered eventually for #tilvids is something like corporate sponsorship, wherein we'd have 2-3 corporate sponsors that we just prominently display, similar to what PBS sometimes does in the US. That way the ads aren't overly-intrusive, and don't have to mine user data. We just display that they are helping to sponsor the site.
Nothing definitive planned at the moment, just musing on future possibilities.
@tilvids The PBS and NPR model is nice because those are considered "underwriting" sponsorships and not really advertisements. They're not allowed to have a specific call to action, just a general statement on what the sponsor does or provides and a web address where prospective supporters of the business can go to learn more.
@kirkman I like the idea of no specific call-to-action, other than awareness and a web address.
@gmate8 @tilvids I recently was turned on to https://12ft.io that lets you get around these paywall for articles. Just put 12ft.io/<url> and it lets you read it.
Https://12ft.io/https://fortune.com/2022/11/28/twitter-advertisers-elon-musk-mastodon-ads-brands/