How are lemmy and other fediverse platforms profitable?
Reddit migrator here (shocking, I know)
Just wondering because I found out about all this yesterday and just realized the ammount of independent servers, but no sign of any ads or sponsors.
So... is it all based on donations?
Also don't just lurk, if you know you should answer because lemmy only counts users who posted or commented as active users.
I would like to see the host push ads, so that it's sustainable. It doesn't have anything negative to the community except it will sustain the instance do does the Fediverse.
Ive seen some things (totally unrelated mobile apps) make ads optional. I think its a good idea if youre iffy about having them but do need them to keep the site up, im sure people would be happy to enable ads to support these types of sites. Plus cant be any worse than the shite youtube has for ads
I'm considering a free version on the app stores with limited ads(subtle and no tracking), a paid version without them, and one with optional donations on alternative stores.
I don't like ads and I don't want to shove them down unwilling throats, but most people don't care (and frankly I need the money)
Among the ones that do, there's those that hate seeing them, and ones with privacy concerns. If I make them subtle and offer an upgrade to remove them, I hope that'll satisfy one group, and the other one can get a build where the ad libraries were never installed in the first place