It probably goes against the philosophy or whatever of FOSS or Lemmy itself, but why not be a little evil so that you can actually sustain yourself? Donations can bring us far, but small non-intrusive ads can be a bliss in the skies for the people actually hosting the instance. Especially if there are millions of users uploading thousands of images and videos. This is extremely expensive.

Is running ads really that taboo?

EDIT: some people seem not to get the point of “millions of users”, which presumably includes non-techies that do not use adblockers. I mean that without ads (or mining?), no instance would be able to scale to the point where it can compete with Reddit for example. If you were to want that. And not for profit, but solely for sustainability.

  • simple@lemmy.mywire.xyz
    9·
    2 years ago

    The solution is to lean into what Lemmy (and the Fediverse) was designed to do - be decentralized.

    If we have more instances running, it would lighten the load on the larger instances (smaller instances can still subscribe to the larger one’s communities and such).

    I think ads isnt a great idea. Firstly, generic ads don’t pay much, for actual good income you need to target ads, which now digs into users privacy and from there we have a slippery slope.

    • mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works
      21·
      2 years ago

      Firstly, generic ads don’t pay much, for actual good income you need to target ads

      True, but the Fediverse doesn’t need to make a profit. If generic ads are enough to (mostly) cover server costs then I don’t think there’d be a huge issue