I see your point but there have been community-run message boards funded by donations in the past. I doubt Lemmy will replicate Reddit’s scale.

I mean… this sort of attitude you have is kind of self-defeating, no? Like let the /r/Android mods have their own community. These public spats make it confusing for end users. The fediverse doesn’t have to be one big happy family - people have freedom to associate with some communities and not others. Duplication is bound to happen in the early days of this fediverse thing.

Eh, I can see that, but the whole point of the fediverse is to get away from centralization, right? I think it’s a good thing they are promoting their own instance on Lemmy. Only issue is that for right now at least - all of the instances look the same…

They still get to moderate /r/android. In the old times of discrete message board communities, there were various Android message board communities before everything started coalescing around Reddit. It’s impossible to have an opportunity to moderate every single community. If they want to create their own duplicate community, they are free to do so.

Can you explain what the controversy is about? So the /r/Android mods tried to start an Android community on the fediverse but other people got to them first? How are they astroturfing?

Time will tell. Lemmy needs more users and more content. Feels like Reddit from the late 2000s right now. The demographic is mostly male/tech-literate and the only threads that get responses are tech and gaming subjects.

Some of the local subs I read have presences on Lemmy but no content. Most normies are still using Reddit.

I still use Reddit. Lemmy still doesn’t have a lot of the communities I know and love on Reddit.

Never used Twitter.

Here’s the thing: the rest of life (rent, food, retirement etc.) cost so much already that anything I can get for free or don’t have to pay for in some way I will make that choice to pirate or not pay. If capitalism wasn’t breathing down my neck with all this crazy inflation in food costs, rent increases, student loan repayments, etc., perhaps I would be more amenable to paying for newspapers and online services and all that nice to have stuff. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Rent and food come first for me. Online services are fungible. Like if it’s free to use or free to take, I’ll take advantage. We all have to eat first and some of us don’t earn enough money to donate to a free project. Donations are a luxury to me.

Don’t judge, 99% of the people using Lemmy and its various instances will never donate. We contribute happily through our posts.

Well, I will sound immensely selfish, and maybe it’s because I’ve been so used to “free everything” on the Internet, but I will never pay for an online service ever. I pirate all my books, all my TV shows, and use scripts and archive.is to read online newspapers and magazines for free. Life costs so much money already, I will never ever feel bothered to actually donate to an online service or free software.

If Lemmy.world goes down due to lack of funds, no problem from me. I’ll join a different instance and carry on. Or go back to Reddit.

I’ll happily admit to being a loafer on the Internet. I expect little from my services so long as I don’t have to pay shit for it.

There won’t be.

Just go back to the Internet forums of old - many major forums back in the day were ran as small businesses with subscriptions and advertising. I hope the fediverse does allow a commercial model - we need diversity in how to fund such infrastructure. If some instance owners want to institute subscriptions or include advertising on their instances, that should be a feature that the Lemmy developers should seriously consider. Otherwise, it’s hard to scale a service like this on donations alone.

Eh, I like free software the same way I like free beer - I don’t ever have to pay for it, and no one can compel me to. The beauty of community projects and free software. I enjoy being a freeloader, thanks very much. I will contribute by making this an active project with my posts.

They have every right to protect themselves against spam. But that said, ever since they defederated, their activity and user numbers are down.

Wow so much misinformed hostility against Beehaw here. The mod tools for Lemmy are currently limited and they just want to protect their community from trolls and spam. There’s no conspiracy here to break federation.

Lemmy.ml is run by tankies who brook no criticism of Russia for its conduct of the war in Ukraine. I was on there, saw posts about the war being deleted and users who raise even pointed criticism at the mods/admins for their Russophilia get banned.

The reality is that unless you have immense, immense scale (i.e., Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn), making money off social media is impossible. Twitter barely made any money before Elon Musk took it over, and it’s making less now.

Reddit is pseudo-anonymous too and is harder to monetize, because high ad rates come from being able to identify your users.