Public opinion seems to be souring on all the big corporate social media sites, and I truly think if we’re able to get the word out about federated social media platforms, people will jump ship.
Also, it’s hard to dislike a platform that isn’t showing ads, selling user data, or generally making decisions for the enrichment of shareholders.
It’s so weird, I don’t even notice the lack of ads most of the time (pihole, never leave home, so it’s roughly the same experience I’m used to)
But when I go out? Oh man fediverse is the only site I’ll use because I know it’s safe from ads. The other privacy/user-focus stuff is just a bonus.
(I don’t have any friends around here, so just sort of go out to be out, and usually for food)
Inevitably there will be a fediverse instance with ads, but whether or not people want to use it will be up to the individual.
Misskey has support for ads. Its mostly used for shitposting by admins.
I use Boost and it has ads. But they’re ignorable as a banner here and there, not constantly. I can live with that.
Gonna be honest, a lot of times I feel like I don’t belong here, I’m still figuring things out. I’m not a “techy” type person (that seems to be some kind of prerequisite) and I barely know how to explain the fediverse to the layman, but I left reddit when they fucked over Joey (my preferred reddit app) and read enough to give reddit the middle finger and never look back. It’s been nice, really. I spend more time outside of the internet now. But I believe in the fediverse, I think it’s the right thing to do. I still check up on lemmy daily, but I get much more value and human connection and only spend the time that is appropriate on lemmy instead of endlessly scrolling. Most days I end up in some Wikipedia rabbit hole. Just like the good ol’ days. Learning new things, meeting new people. That’s what I love about the internet.
It’s what we all loved about the internet I think, before the web become… “that” (looking at the pile of shit the web has become).
But actually it’s not the web, not really. It’s the big tech platforms that most people seem to think is the internet now. It’s sad to watch how people log on to “Facebook” and not the general web anymore. And then Google in front of everything, like a big cancer growth.
Lemmy is not the new internet either I believe. But it’s here to show people that something else can exist. As soon as we let advertising in here though, it’s over.
The beautiful thing about decentralisation is that if an instance tries to as ads, then you can go to a different instance and see the same content.
If an instance creates as posts, your instance admin can block the whole instance.
Interestingly, the big instances seem to easily get enough donations to cover costs. I think that’s the great thing about this model, people are willing to donate when they know it’s not some big corporate making profit for shareholders.
