this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2024
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The Twitter format is crap. It's bad for search (Mastodon users don't wanna be searchable). There is a huge recency bias: observed in echo waves of circlejerk memes (CEO stuff being the most recent one). It limits discussion depth compared to the reddit format. Here on lemmy people often read all comments, and I like it even if mine get downvoted :)
The subscription model rarely works. Netflix now shows ads, Twitter is still in the red. The donation/self-hosted model is even less successful. I have an unpopular opinion that ads are still the best way to pay for servers and staff. Reddit users hated ads, and that led to them turning into a data repo for Gemini.
I hope Fedi becomes more accepting of ads, but it's a tall order given that it's still mostly pinkos and nerds.
Debatable. People don't want their private account searchable. Creators and news account want their account and their post to be discoverable.
It's not that the subscription model doesn't work. It's the investor that demands things to grow even more all the time. There are plenty of service that simply deliver good stuff without investor demand and ended being sustainable for years.
At least, some non-Western fediverse instance runs ads. Notably the second biggest instance in fediverse, Misskey.io. Their ads are community ads, like promoting indie games, vtuber, comic books, IRL gallery event, etc. They also did subscription providing additional cosmetics like Discord. Everyone's happy.
As it appears to me Mastodon is public like Twitter. I didn't know about private instances. Why use this format when there's chat rooms?
What subscriptions do you have?
Thanks, I'll take a look at misskey.
The notion that Mastodon (and/or) Twitter as public conversation is not universal.
There's a lot of people, especially in other language that use the social media as microblog or casual coversation. I'm Indonesian, and a lot of people here using Twitter as "anon" account for random rambling (basically microblog) without even interacting with anyone (except IRL friend).
Even Mastodon (and other fedi software) has feature for followers only post or quiet posting (cannot be viewed in live feed, or discovery).
Thanks for explaining. I use group chats for IRL friends. It's strange that some prefer mastodon because of the twitter format. I suppose it's like private Facebook groups.
I like the sharp distinction between private stuff and searchable stuff. So it's good to have them as IM vs forum formats.
when the objective is profiteering and endless growth
I think that's acceptable if it's not based on datamining and profiling and personalization, but on context, and if ads are honest and not too attention grabbing. yeah advertise your product/service, with its benefits, and do not try to persuade people into paying for garbage
ARPU is a sadistic metric.
when the objective is profiteering and endless growth
I think that's acceptable if it's not based on datamining and profiling and personalization, but on context, and if ads are honest and not too attention grabbing. yeah advertise your product/service, with its benefits, and do not try to persuade people into paying for garbage
Is making a profit = profiteering? I agree with endless growth. I hate the big data model that assumes large numbers of users, huge churn, low success rate.
The ads I had in mind would be topic-based. If you're on a supplement sub, you see suggestions for a vendor. If you're on a web dev sub, you see VPS vendors. Nothing crass like Betterhelp or Masterworks.
no, what I wanted to mean is wanting to make lots of money just for the sake of it, or to increase value
yeah, exactly, that's not so bad
Subscription models for services, even internet services, have worked for a very long time for all sorts of things. I'm not talking about streaming video, I'm talking about things like people paying for online courses or access to something like Harper's Magazine's website (or even the local newspaper's website; my mother has an online-only subscription to the local newspaper). Because is charge is generally reasonable and is also not endlessly rising year over year. Subscription costs to those things go up, but not at the rate of things like Netflix.
Perhaps activitypub services can be viable as a service. I don't think so, but I hope I'm wrong.