Fact is, the Lemmy ecosystem needs money to handle the growing server reqirements as more people migrate as well as the development cost of new features (I know Lemmy is OSS but the devs should still get some compensation for their effort).
Seeing how much some reddit users love awards so much that they cant stop giving money to Reddit to award posts protesting the api change, this could be a great way for users to voluntary support the ecosystem. It can be easily ignored by users not caring about them (clients could even add an option to hide them), but users liking the feature can go wild and this time the money goes to volunteers keeping this alive instead of greedy admins, power mods and investors.
Though there would be some big organization questions attached: attached:
- Which server handles the payment? A centralized one, the one where the post was made or the one where the user giving the award account was created.
- How will the money be shared between the Devs and the individual instances in a way that is fair but cant be abused easily.
You must log in or register to comment.
Could we like, not immediately talk about monetisation 1 month after leaving reddit? If you want to support your instance host, you can ask for a way to donate.
The hard truth is that long term, we likely need another way besides donations to keep the ecosystem alive.
Or maybe some people just can’t imagine how this could work without being centered around money.
Lemmy has been around for years. New instances are popping up as new users come in. So far, I haven’t seen an instance suffering from lack of funds, but others being funded for months ahead, some even donating excess funds to Lemmy devs.
All while topics like these pop up every other day. For me, it looks like catastrophization. Seeking solutions for problems which do not exist (yet? Not even sure about that).
I dont expect a decentralised platform to be profitable and also think donations are better than in-app purchases.
But I dont want big instances to suddenly turn off because they cant afford it anymore or the development being behind so much we loose users to missing features.
Looking at the donation pages of lemmy instances there are enough donations for now but it is good to have a plan B for in case we get flooded by users not willing to donate so this platform survives long term. That plan B should be as least Invasive as possible,so no ads,analytics or paywall. Thats why I suggested something that is completely cosmetic.
I think a good start before all of that would be for struggling instances to tell their user base that they are struggling.
Not going to lie, awards like that would probably make me start looking for another new platform again. I don’t want that part of reddit, personally. I want comments that are there to be there, not comments that are only there to get the most positive feedback. For me, doing this would take lemmy further away from being an open forum, and move it closer towards being a lame popularity contest. I can only see the same jokes so many times.
I think it’s a distraction from the actual interactions. Same way karma is.
I’m all for supporting instances and open source developers, but any kind of reward for a donation creates wrong incentives. Donation is called a donation because it’s a gift without expecting something in return.
I fully agree with you, karma “whoring” is a serious problem on reddit, awards could lead to the same behavior here if implemented.
Donations are the best way to support the platform, if you want to be “visible” as donator, opencollective allows you to post a message about it, there’s also a sort of top donators page, that’s more than enough in my opinion.
Why don’t server admins open OpenCollective accounts or something similar. It seems to work on Mastodon. I would be willing to pitch in to help finance the instance I’m on.
You’ve been awarded lemmy gold!
I never cared for them on Reddit and used third party tools to remove or hide them.
I don’t like that they can be used to shop visibility.
I would like that it gives an opportunity to fund instances but I would hope we could discover another way to do this.
Just donate if you want to support your server.
Awards are special actions reserved for people who pay, that don’t improve the platform anyway. It’s enshittification.
It baffles me how people seem fixated on the gamification of a discussion and payment system, as if somehow we’re not adults who can see that the servers cost money, they provide us value, and we should help defray the costs (directly, through donations/payments). Clear/transparent information on instance costs and available funding is all we really need. For the instance owners it would be nice to have some built in code to provide this as a common location so they can disseminate the info with as little additional effort as possible, ideally with hooks to several payment systems they can connect - esp given the global nature of the platform.
Because, sadly, it works. Humans are social animals and gaining and displaying status is hard wired into us. You might not be interested in status in this way (but there are likely others just as irrational that you do), but enough people are such that this would likely generate a lot more money than just donations.
I don’t want the comments section to look like the inner cabinet of the North Korean army
I like this comment. Let me award you the flaming golden sun of glory medal of the people.
I think making likes and dislikes public is bad enough. You can probably guess how that applies to “gold”.
Can we leave the karma system and awards with Reddit? Allowing voting in comment sections for pseudo-moderation by the users is good, but when it turns into a scoring system the conversation devolves into a competition to see who can craft the most palatable opinion to get the most imaginary internet points.
Despite all my thoughtful and helpful comments I made in my 11 years on reddit, you know what my top comment was?
- Comes in
- Kills the Queen
- Tanks the economy
- Leaves
What a legacy.
47k updoots, and 27 awards.
This right here.
I used to (a very, very, very long time ago) contribute on StackOverflow. How much? I haven’t even logged in for over 7 years (and didn’t contribute a good two years before that) and my account is still in the top 0.71% overall.
Let me tell you how I racked up that score.
I monitored the site in off-hours (easy to do with my time zone). I found new questions for the most popular programming language on the site (back then this being Java). I then did what the asker should have done: I Googled. I then wrote an answer (a correct answer: this is important) and got first-responder points.
And here’s the funny thing: I don’t program in Java. I hate the language. I know enough Java programming to be dangerous. VERY dangerous. But 18% of my points came from answering Java questions. A further 15% came from answering C++ questions which is at least a language I know … but also despise and won’t work with any longer.
This is how easy it is to game fantasy Internet points: whether “karma” or “gold” or whatever you like. And if you start providing these fantasy Internet points you’re going to start attracting people for whom high numbers of them are important and they will do what I did to the detriment of the ecosystem. (I mean at least in my case my answers were right. Disingenuous that I of all people answered them, but at least correct. This is not the case for all points whores.)
I don’t love the awards from Reddit, but I would like to see something like this (unpopular opinion, I know). Instances need funding.
I don’t care about what the awards are themselves, I care about the way the funding works. I would love to see the funds split in a two tiered system.
Here is a general example of my idea. When a award is purchased it gets split into two pots. One pot is a general pot that gets disbursed to those running the instances based on whatever metrics and intervals agreed upon. The other part gets assigned to the reward itself. So in this example let’s say an award costs one dollar. 90 cents would go to the pool to be split, the other 10 cents would be tied to the award. So if you award a post on an instance it goes specifically to that instance itself. Instances could even set a percent split with community moderators of the 10 cents. That way you could fund moderators (if that ever becomes needed)
You could even split part of the award reward with the commentor assigned to it… but that puts a weird feeling in my gut and I feel like it is a bad idea to monetize the content itself.
There is a lot you could do with this and a lot more would need to be fleshed out, so I am just thinking out loud.
Forget useless awards, we need c̶r̶y̶p̶t̶o̶c̶u̶r̶r̶e̶n̶c̶y̶ tipping abilities baked in here.
Edit: never mind
Yeah, replacing useless rewards with useless crypto. Amazing idea.
yeah, money sucks
Crypto isn’t money pal, it’s a digital commodity that doesn’t have a purpose other than to be traded. There is a reason crypto’s value is measured in actual currencies rather than it’s purchasing power, as you can’t really buy much with it.
Right but creators can exchange it for money to like, pay bills and stuff. Don’t be daft
Edit: you can donate to lemmy in crypto https://join-lemmy.org/donate
Why if it’s a scam?
Then why not just give them money?
Ok, should I write a check? Who do I make it out to? How bout direct deposit: just give me the bank account number. Why is lemmy anti-crypto?
“Why not just give them money?”
Because every way to do it is trackable and cryptocurrency offers privacy-protecting ways to pay people. This should be important to this community. Nobody batted an eyelash opening their wallets to Reddit for coins, awards and nfts, but crypto is the scam? Ok
Well you could always try to give cash ;)
Snarky remarks aside, I’m not saying crypto is inherently a scam (although I do think it is more or less reinventing the wheel). I think it’s less efficient than fiat currency at this point since you need to convert your crypto to make much use of it. I can see your point about privacy protection given that transactions and accounts are supposed to be anonymous (although I have some privacy qualms about all transactions being put onto a distributed public ledger), and anonymity can be necessary if you’re suffering from persecution. But with anonymity, how do you prove your ownership over your crypto assets should you lose access to your account, or have it stolen? That’s a very critical drawback to crypto.
crypto is the beanie babies for this generation. Some people are going to make a lot of money but a vast, vast majority are going to be the proud owners of something worthless that they spent a lot of money on.
OK, thanks
You don’t have to put your life savings in, just use it to send 5 bucks across the network the same way you use Venmo
To what end? So it can get converted into a real currency immediately? I understand (since you spammed it everywhere) that you can donate via crypto, but that’s only because crypto can be converted into a real currency.
Give it up, my friend; fetch isn’t going to happen.
I can, via AliPay or WeChat wallet, reach out and send money to anybody on the AliPay or WeChat networks in seconds.
How long does an average Bitcoin transaction take again?
For small transaction (under 1000RMB/~US$140) there are zero transaction fees. For small businesses (doing under 10,000RMB/mo. in transactions) there are zero transaction fees as well. After that 10,000RMB limit is reached the transaction fees cap out at about 2% (they start smaller and ramp up as transactions increase).
What’s the transaction fee for Bitcoin transactions again?
If fraud happens when I buy something (like a business sends fake goods, or doesn’t deliver anything, etc.) the Ali Network (or Tencent for WeChat) steps in and reverses the transaction. I lose nothing. In addition if a business was egregious in its fraud, or has a history of doing it, the Ali Network (or Tencent) can and will remove that business’ ability to, well, do business. A cancer is excised.
What’s the recourse for bad transactions on Bitcoin again?
Donating via Bitcoin is the dumbest single way to donate. It’s slow, it’s expensive (robbing the people you’re donating to of cash!), it’s unreliable, and it’s prone to abuse.
error loading comment
tl; dr: if you don’t want to see seas of ads, awards are the better choice, in my opinion.
honestly, i would be fine with it. I’m not entirely sure what’s the big philosophical deal, donations are harder to get, and I’m not so sure as many people are going to voluntarily go and visit the donations page. on the other hand, if the award option is immediately there within the post, one is much more likely to give it. lemmy can simply not sustain itself on the long run solely on donations, especially considering the mass of media content that may be posted. instances can run on them for now. i would prefer them running on dumb awards than on ads instead, and the mole of ads required to make up for the money needed could be really high we’d get reddit level advertisement. hell nah. also, it incentivizes the user on posting quality content if they see the chance of shiny lemming medals, maybe.
At least pretend to hold down your skirt geez… 🤭
huh?
Funny how back in the 90s and 00s I could browse BBs without seeing a sea of ads, or any.
Almost like user run communities don’t actually need to return a profit or recoup costs to be active.
Doesn’t the fact that those sites no longer exist kinda prove they needed to recoup costs to stay active?
No.
They stopped running because it’s been 20-30 years and people moved on after a decade or two.
They didn’t die off due to server costs. They died off because companies built for profit centralized sites and advertised them to get people to go there instead.
Easier for large number of people to congregate at a bar than at Phil’s house.
might be because traffic wasn’t as much. Also, i understand accepting and missing communities ran by not meeting ends. But implicitly demanding that may be a little too much. also, i imagine there wasn’t nearly as much media traffic in those ages because images took that long to load let alone videos but i wasnt online yet.
Maybe but most of our content today is hosted off site, on YT or Imgur, etc. So that’s not a concern for current sites much either.
good point
