- Use distributed, federated services like Lemmy, mastodon etc.
- Support the hosts with our own funds.
- Moderate our own communities.
The second point is the most important. Reddit happened because they are a corporate entity seeking profit. Let’s own our social media platforms by actively contributing funds to them.
I wonder if it would be possible to create an explicitly ad-supported instance of Lemmy that would insert unobtrusive ads into its feeds.
I do think there could be an audience for that if it meant the instance was reliable, performant and well moderated.
I’m sure it’s possible, but maybe this is a good time to reflect on what that would mean for the experience. Sure, maybe you wouldn’t mind, and maybe some other users who do would filter them out client side, but personally it feels like ads even if they start innocuous, eventually evolve into something invasive, deceptive, or both. At a certain point, if people aren’t clicking through and buying, the advertisers aren’t making money. It becomes almost a predatory relationship with the host trying to squeeze money out of the users whatever way they can.
Maybe not everyone could, but I feel a lot of people would rather throw in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on rather than deal with that.