Nothing stops them from doing so.

But I don't think that's the path you'll see super often. Most people enthusiast enough to host their own instance and open it to others probably disagree with ads, and users are very likely going to reject them.

Plus, wether we like it or not, Lemmy is majoritarily used by people with a lot of tech knowledge - the exact same group you'd expect to be running ad blocking software.

But if federated social networks keep growing to the point they could rival a platform like Reddit, for sure some ad supported instances will coexist with user-funded ones.

I'm gone if there is ads even though I'd block them. I'm sick of ads. They have ruined the internet .

If they add a gold like feature that splits between the instance and the project that would be useful in addition to community donations.

I'm here because its not like the rest of the internet. I run tor relays to help the network, I contribute to foss projects and I seed distros too for the greater good. There is enough of us here to keep it going.

Or, we could donate and not have to see ads. I'm sick of ads. Are you running or planning on running an instance with ads? I'd love to follow along and see how your journey would go.

Ads? Hard pass.

I'd rather set up my own server and federate.

Who's going to see them when everyone here uses adblocks and VPNs? Who's gonna click on them when everyone here is a world-wary anti-consumer? Who's going to buy anything when everyone here knows very well what they want and where to get it?

Why do we want a single instance to be as large as reddit?

Weren't ads the ruination of Reddit in the first place? When social media companies get hungry for advertising, it's the users who suffer. Not just from the ads themselves, but from the advertisers' expectations for the content on the site to conform to their standards.

"Donations can bring us far"

Why do you believe donations won't be enough? I dont think there is any evidence (yet) to support that.

I run my own instance and I don’t run ads because I frankly hate seeing them myself. They clutter up the web view, cause lag on the webpage, and frankly are annoying and ugly to look at.

I’d rather pay out of my own pocket to keep my instance going rather than run ads. Donations would be ideal to help keep it running for longer. As sad as it is, if I couldn’t keep paying the server costs and there weren’t any donations.. I’d just shut the server down. I personally will never run ads on an instance I run. I don’t want to perpetuate or support the lifeless corporate greed cycle.

Why should it be ads?

There are so many different ways to have some form of monetization that is not intrusive.

Running Ads is not the only way to keep the lights on.

Fuck ads

no instance would be able to scale to the point where it can compete with Reddit for example

Well I think that's part of the point of the Fediverse: No single server has to scale that much. Sure, the big ones are going to get big and stay big, but no one Lemmy server is ever going to have as many people using it as Reddit does. That means the cost of each instance is going to be tiny in comparison to what Reddit spends to keep one big monolithic site running (which is easily in the millions). Fediverse will distribute users across many instances/platforms which also distributes the cost. Not only do users have many Lemmy instances, they've also got kbin, and mastodon, plus any other platform that joins ActivityPub.

Reddit/Facebook style monolithic sites are not viable. You see time and time again these platforms desperately trying to monetize because it's so expensive to run. Fediverse can have millions and millions of users, but no single entity will have to foot that bill.

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.

The point of Lemmy is NOT to have a single instance compete with Reddit! That would just be Reddit V2 then. There just needs to be more instances to distribute the user load more evenly. Running a small/medium sized VPS costs about as much as a Netflix subscription.

Ads on Reddit were one of the reasons that third party apps were so popular... They didn't show them.

The whole point is to get away from Reddit, not just make several smaller copies. No thanks. I've donated already, and I'll donate again (to Jerboa, Lemmy devs, and instances if they prove their worthiness.

I am very much certain that once there is a lot of users here, corporations will show up to run ads. Then I‘ll go to an instance which defederates from them, cause I‘m not dealing with this.

Someone who even takes the step into getting into the fediverse is probably using ad blockers for the purposes of security alone on a daily basis. I don't see them disabling it.

If they start running ads it's only a matter of time before they become shitty like Reddit. Ads is where it starts.

I think what would be useful would be a transparent system where the instance owners would keep a record of how many users / interaction they're getting and how much it's currently costing.

That way if they say they're supporting 20,000 users and we need a VPS instance that costs X a month for the current number of requests, you can somewhat forecast the need for expansion

I get the idea isn't to make mega servers like Reddit, but if people like the UI / experience of a single instance it's hard to tell them to go elsewhere. Having transparency about actual costs would be useful, you could have a little widget on the sidebar or footer showing how much it currently being donated.

Text is cheap. It doesn't cost a ton of money to run these instances at least not yet, so people can do it as a hobby or with a few supporters.

It does however pay to ask your instance admins what their plans and policies are for moderation, defederating, finances, backups, having a money buffer in case things need to be spun down, and having multiple admins in case of disaster.

I'm not sure that there needs to be a profit motive to running an instance. Maybe someone wants to host to give back to the community around their hobby/niche/neck-of-the-woods. This seemed to be the case with a number of forums/smaller IRC networks years ago. For larger communities this gets complicated I guess. SomethingAwful went the route of requiring users to pay for an account.

Personally as a uswe I think running ads is not a bad idea, just if I would pay already (through donations for example), I prefer to have the option to show no ads.

I can imagine the current server owners either be decently supported by donations and/or see hosting a lemmy server currently more as a hobby.

sorry, I block all ads by default. if I get popups indicating that I need to whitelist, I block elements until I never see that crap again or the site is unusable, after which I find a different site.

no ads. never

I would be very curious to see the cost of running an instance, especially as the user base grows

I think I'd rather have an optional membership to support the instance with perks or something. Not reddit gold though. Lemmy silver?

Because these instances are often run as hobby projects and out of passion, not to be sustainable.

The Fediverse isnt corporate, we're a community and nothing will change that. We don't want to make money, we want to bring back what social media was supposed to be.

Additionally, it has become part of the culture of the Fediverse to regularly remind your peers to donate to your instance, as they're who are running this all for our benefit.

The epitome of a reddit user...

I wouldn't be surprised if someone will do an ad-supported service. Or just do a straight-up subscription service -- I mean, Usenet providers do that. Means that you don't risk having your instance just vanish, someone handles security updates and load issues and so forth. Different models could coexist at different levels of reliability and performance and whatnot.

I'm guessing that ads/sponsored posts would probably take the form of companies setting up their own Lemmy instances and pays to federate with other instances, and my could-be-unpopular opinion is that it's fine as long as it's fair, since if they have to abide by upvotes/downvotes as everybody else it forces the companies to make good contents, and that if they get too annoying/spammy they'll just get defederated or people will vote with their virtual feet and go elsewhere.

And the good thing about this approach is that you can make sure you get real interactions with real people at these companies for tech support, otherwise the ads would be completely useless.

The point of the fediverse is that hosts can pick their own business model - free, freemium, ad-supported, subscription. Just like e-mail, you sign up with the provider who provides the type of service you think best meets your needs. If they piss you off, you move to a different provider.

If the fediverse demands hosting for millions of users, someone will make a server to host millions.

I personally think "big" instances should focus on user/identity management, while communities live in small groups on small instances. This lets the identity providers include/exclude with much better granularity (compared to the beehaw mess) making the communities much less susceptible to being collateral damage.