It probably goes against the philosophy or whatever of FOSS or Lemmy itself, but why not be a little evil so that you can actually sustain yourself? Donations can bring us far, but small non-intrusive ads can be a bliss in the skies for the people actually hosting the instance. Especially if there are millions of users uploading thousands of images and videos. This is extremely expensive.

Is running ads really that taboo?

EDIT: 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. And not for profit, but solely for sustainability.

  • Black Xanthus
    1•1 year ago

    A lot of this issue can be fixed with technology advancements, and improvements in Lemmy itself. I think a lot of people ‘forget’ how things have improved over the years. Twitter improving the character limit, Reddit improving search…

    Lemmy may not be there yet, but neither were the others.

    I see no reason why ads can’t be ‘opt in’ at a client or app level (IE, the ap or other website shows apps, pays the server the user chooses). Same with ‘paid’ apps giving a share to their favourite insurance etc. The issue needs to be one of ease of payment - as with most business models.