What constitutes Usage Data. Is it sharing the posts I view, communities I subscribe to etc?
Does paying for a premium version stop this data being collected?
What constitutes Usage Data. Is it sharing the posts I view, communities I subscribe to etc?
Does paying for a premium version stop this data being collected?
Doesn’t this ad/subscription model, go against the grain a bit? With Lemmy & the fediverse in general, being an opensource environment, which has no ads, & funded by donations, rather than a subscription model…
No, it doesn’t. Unlike Reddit, Twitter, or Threads, Lemmy offers a variety of apps. There are so many that there is something for everyone. Even a “professional” app that finances itself with advertising or a subscription is allowed. The special thing about Lemmy is the freedom of choice.
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Funding your project with donations is just not a realistic long-term goal. This is why so many instances fold up shop in just a couple of weeks as their servers are overloaded and no one donates money to keep it up.
Capitalism is a problem but it doesn’t mean everything has to be socialism. There can be an in-between.
It’s not even that to be honest. Socialism is characterized by worker ownership and operation of companies primarily. LJ is a sole proprietor exploiting nobody, not earning a wage via labor and not having to work because he under pays others to work for him. He’s just a worker like the rest of us.
I definitely agree that donations is not a viable long term path. Maybe in a different economic model. People need to be realistic. The general arguments they are making against Sync in favor of FOSS apps can also be made against them using FOSS apps by the FLOSS folks. People should pay if they can. And use a free third party app if they can’t, or don’t like how sync works.
I really don’t get the hate people are putting out there over this. This is why third party apps build strong ecosystems. You can find what you want.
You are mixing socialism and communism.
You’re right
I believe its possible, at least coming from the minecraft world. if the instance doesnt grow as big as lemmy.world or something then you can ask for patrons and other ways to get donations. a lot of the plugins I use for my minecraft servers are run this way and its the way i run my server, I just ask for a dollar donation if possible from my players and that covers a little bit more than what the server costs me to run. when I check some of the plugin’s patreon page they pull in about 1k-8k a month
https://www.patreon.com/coreprotect
https://www.patreon.com/sonicether
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The reddit gold model didn’t work. Reddit was a VC funded start up though, so if was expected to make a lot more than just enough to keep the servers going.
I’d bet lemmy instances can get by on donations and reddit style awards. Like you say, it can be incentivized further with cosmetic rewards.
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That’s a good point. The federation part makes it trickier.
Even if it was socialism, that doesn’t mean money doesn’t exist lol, there would have to be some kind of tax added on for everyone to support the product/project/whatever.
We have socialized fire departments in America, does that mean they don’t get paid and work for free? Nah, but you don’t get a bill before they put the fire out on your house either
Socialism doesn’t mean free.
You’re free to use any app you want. Some people prefer free open-source apps, some people want to pay for a quality app. It’s good to have a choice unlike with Reddit. I don’t understand people complaining about having additional choice because they don’t like it.
Some people want to keep the Fediverse ecosystem completely pure in terms of free software, and they will yell at you if you don’t play along.
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Some people do give stuff away for free or donate their time. “Nothing in life is free” would only be true if everyone was a die-hard capitalist.
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I would one time pay for this, but a subscription feels meh.
There are plenty of apps for Lemmy, that aren’t supported by ads, nor should they be, given the whole ethos of the fediverse…
I really like Connect for Lemmy! And it’s Canadian!
Connect is really nice, as are Canadians👍🏼
The ethos of the fediverse (insofar as it’s completely free with no ads) won’t be sustainable at scale; income for continued development and support does need to be taken into account at some point, and that goes for servers, frontends, apps, etc. Funding from donations only gets you so far. We will have to talk about it some day.
However, it is entirely too soon for ads and subscriptions. This feels openly and brazenly like talking advantage of Sync overly enthusiastic fanclub and the Sync name recognition. Get in early with a big name and start making money before any other big name apps like Boost are released.
Then maybe that’s as far as we should go?
Wikipedia makes it work.
You’d be surprised to hear that wikipedia’s main income is from their major benefactors like amazon, google, and other organizations. Donations from individual people make up a small portion of their income.
https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2020-annual-report/donors/#section-2
Another example would be lichess.org , which manages to compete with chess.com (a comercial site) and even pays the main developer a salary. All based purely on donations.
I think it can definitely work even in the long run.
Too soon, being taken advantage of?
The developer has a track record, we already know the product being delivered and the terms.
The fan base are the people who were already using Sync for Reddit.
The people who like me had used Sync for Reddit since 2017. Sync always had ads and the inherent tracking, I paid 2.69€ in Jan 2017 to remove ads and support the development.
(When In 2022 the developer added another support level where you had access to early betas, I paid again 4.99€, because I’m an early adopter and wanted to support again because I never went the subscription route)
I have also setup a monthly donation towards my Lemmy instance.
It might feel too soon because Ljdawson moves fast.
I feel like as long as your home instance can keep alive with donations then it will scale well. If your home instance starts needing a subscription or shows ads you could always migrate elsewhere. (But that’s a pain I have already done that)
People have been saying some variant of “the fediverse won’t work at scale if it stays free and without ads” for a decade now. And yet it keeps growing despite remaining free and without ads.
What scale is it at and what scale are we comparing it to? For Lemmy the comparison is reddit, and there is absolutely no way donations would cover the sheer cost of compute required to compete with a user base of that size.
I’m not going to bother looking into the numbers but I’m thinking all of the fediverse together doesn’t even come close to that user base.
lemmy.world has frequent outages that last most of the day. It wouldn’t say its exactly smooth sailing
There is now a one time payment of $20 usd ($30 cad) to remove ads, an ongoing $20 cad a year subscription for ad free + additional services, or a one time, $99 usd payment for lifetime access to ad free + pro services.
So a nice selection!
I don’t have an issue with a reasonable subscription, but hard pass on trackers, especially when you’re paying.
Not defending tracking or anything, but you do not get trackers if you pay. This tracker is just for ads, which you don’t get if you pay.
The issue for me is having the code. If I pay, I want an app without the ads/trackers code.
The code isn’t run, so who cares?
I care as having it or not is two different situations. It had a layer of protection without it.
That’s true, but according to the Dev Google is cracking down on devs having two versions of an app (i.e. a basic ad-supported version and a pro ad-free version) and I believe if you want an app on the Google store it has to have to ad code in it. That last part I’m not sure if that only applies to apps that will have ads in them.
But, the dev doesn’t comply with gdpr. It’s opt-out by default what is not the case.
So to access the payment, you have to share private and personal datas. This isn’t fine at all. He should offer the option to buy without being tracked.
That’s a good point.
Yep lol. IDC how good your app is if I don’t know what’s it doing with my data I’m not paying!
I hope there will be a pro version where you can pay to opt out of all ad and track nonsense.
laughs in Voyager PWA