I’m fairly new and don’t 100% understand it yet, but instances are run on servers that require money. Are we heading towards seeing ads or subscriptions to raise funds instead of relying on donations to cover overhead?

Especially with the influx of new users. Hardware upgrades are needed.

  • @SmallAlmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1831 year ago

    No ads, no tracking, just donations. The model proved itself when twitter went to shit and a big influx of users came to mastodon, it all worked out.

    • @small44@lemmy.world
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      661 year ago

      Many mastodon instances shut down. There’s always a risk that at some point the donations are not enough to sustain an instance. It could be very problematic if mods lose their communities when an instance shutdown.

      • @Moohamin12@lemmy.world
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        361 year ago

        Perhaps what we need is a backup code or some kind of exportable file with all our data (subbed communities, interactions, yadda yadda) which we can port over to a new instance if necessary.

        • Norgur
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          201 year ago

          Yeah, especially with Lemmy which is a lot more permanent than Mastodon is. You can screenshot your old toots but you can’t screenshot a userbase. There should be a way to migrate a community to another instance while keeping the subscriptions.

        • Matt
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          71 year ago

          Mastodon does this (you can download a full backup of your entire account - although not sure about media) every 7 days, which can be imported into various other Fediverse platform accounts, depending on what they allow.

          I suspect that all Fediverse platforms worth their salt will make this a core feature.

      • @SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
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        21 year ago

        You mean promotion. Not all promotion is bad. When a game developper posts a content update about their game, that’s promotion. And I think most subscribers of that community will be pretty happy to see that kind of promotion. It’s opt in.

      • ryan213OP
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        421 year ago

        I’ve been on Mastodon for months and haven’t noticed any ads. Just people letting me know about some product they like. Wait…

        • @gharmonica@lemmy.world
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          211 year ago

          That’s been always the case on other platforms on top of the official ads. Damn every now and then you’d see what’s clearly an guerilla ad campaign hitting the front page of reddit.

          • drphungky
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            21 year ago

            Reddit got WAY worse in the last 5-7 years though. I think corporations got more ok with it after best practices were both cemented and more publicized after the 2016 presidential election. Previously astroturfing was there for political campaigns and state actors, but more shady. Then Russia went off the rails with agitprop, Cambridge Analytical was all in the news, and everyone realized how pervasive and easy it was. Now everyone does it, and often.

        • Margot Robbie
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          141 year ago

          Nonsense, “No, Stupid Questions!” is actually sponsored by “Barbie”, only in theaters July 21st.

      • LoudWaterHombre
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        61 year ago

        There are no ads, just as there are no added flavours in McDoubleBeef 100% flavour and 200% beef!!!