I mean there’s Reddit ofc, as well as Twitter in its entirety, Discord is implementing some dumb updates, there are issues with Tumblr as well as everything to do with Meta, and I’m sure there are plenty more (and I haven’t even touched other digital media, for example the Sims). Why is it all happening in the span of about a couple months?
Actually I once applied for a job at Reddit, there were like 5 or 6 interviews spread over 2 days basically. And almost everyone I talked to did something related to Ads. (The position I was considered for would have been about some service to deal with problematic posts, hate etc.) So it’s just a huge ad machine.
This reminds me also about this Facebook documentary from 2 years ago, how ML algorithms implicitly shape how we interact. Maybe such efforts were better put into good moderation (oof), and a well-working UI…
That said, I wouldn’t mind paying a little and already even did so to give awards and also for an App. (Can’t be that much they earn with ads anyway?) I hope Lemmy is there to stay though, I’d be happy to donate/contribute every once in a while.
Everything in the Fediverse is self-hosted on somebody’s dime, if not yours, with the cool part being that you can host yourself and at least have some control for your money and hassle.
Fediverse users seem to tend toward the over-40 set, with lots of people who can eat a $25 monthly hosting fee for their own instance if it matters to them. I think we’re reaching the point as an internet community where a lot more people are saying fine, I’ll pay for the social media thing if I have to, goddamn, fuckit can’t take it with you. All we have to show for “free” social media is communities that turn sour again and again, and a sort of perpetual fleeing of the storm from one site to the next.
Lemmy is very lightweight and you can run it on $5/mo or even free tier VPS if you’re the only user for the instance. I myself run my lemmy instance on a low power pc in my closet and route the traffics via a $3 vps (essentially rented for its static ip address).