bourbonmakesitbetter

I sense an opportunity here: managed hosting of Fediverse services. I don't mean a managed host where you can install/run the services. I mean a top-to-bottom setup, management, backup, upgrades, monitoring, etc. so the only thing you need to do is administer the community. I'd love to set up several Fediverse services for my local community, and I know there is an audience that would also love that, but I also know I do not want to invest the time it takes to manage the technical side of that.

Having easier to set up instances would help in relieving the pressure from the more popular current instances. We're starting to see those hosting options come on line for some of the services, but not fast enough for my liking.

First, just because reddit fucked it up doesn't mean that's the only path forward.

Second, if the Fediverse community doesn't address advertising, somebody will. Probably somebody with deep pockets, and it won't be in the way anyone other than the advertisers wants it. Sure you can defederate them, but that's most likely going to result in a fragmented Fediverse with 95% of the users in a corporate walled-garden and 5% of users in a free (however you want to define "free) but content-poor open world.

I'm not suggesting that advertising should be pushed between instances. Quite the opposite: advertising (if allowed) would be up to the individual instance to decide if, when and how users of that instance (i.e. those that are browsing that instance using that instance's UI/application/website) would see advertising. Don't like ads? Sign up with a different instance. The API I've suggested is not for publishing ads. It's purely informational to enforce transparency about how/where the funds to run an instance come from, and, if you so desire, tell you the official way to directly provide financial support. That information could also be used when subscribing across instances, to warn of potential bias, or about their advertising policies if you decide to visit directly. I'm basically suggesting a way to encode the suggestions in https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/11/fediverse-could-be-awesome-if-we-dont-screw-it, point #6 in a machine-readable way.

The Fediverse needs to get a handle on advertising and revenue, and what's considered acceptable and not acceptable. It's easier to do this now than after a bunch of bad actors have shown up and ruined things. My initial idea: a standard API that provides the contract between the service and its users. It would include things such as how, where and when advertising is used in that instance, whether you can opt-out, and how to do so, operating costs, revenue sources and relative amounts, etc. This API could be leveraged to aggregate lists of instances that end users could then sort and filter to find those that meet with their individual values. It could also become part of the standard UI so that users could easily locate where to support the operator of various instances, instead of relying on posting messages and hoping somebody knows where to donate (and that they are providing the true information).

Yes, I do realize there's a bit of a "herding cats" aspect to this. And there are those who are just completely opposed to any sort of "monetization" at all, but to me that's just an argument in favour of making it as transparent and discoverable as possible.

Hundreds of thousands of people on Fedi are yet to be convinced to this. Your opinion is unpopular, and any try do combine fedi with funding by advertisements could likely break the fediverse rather than make it more sustainable.

I'm not sure what "opinion" you are referring to. I'm not advocating that I want advertising or commercial entities running the majority of the Fediverse instances. Or is it my suggestion that it's possible to avoid that fate, even while suggesting that it's inevitable that advertising will eventually arrive?

Really my main point was we need to have some way of ensuring that instances are able to pay their operating costs. At least until unicorn farts and rainbows are accepted in exchange for hosting, bandwidth and technical services.

Thanks! Hadn't come across that particular site yet. Unfortunately, still the same list of hosts. I'm really looking for Frendica/Mastodon and maybe Pixelfed and Writefreely. So, basically all the ones that aren't yet available in a turn-key solution.

Like I said, slower than I'd like. But I'm sure we'll get there.

I've been thinking recently that machine learning models could be used as a first-line defense for moderation, e.g. identify obvious spam/violations, but also identify borderline cases that require human intervention. So you could reduce the burden on moderators, and perhaps even shield them from some of the more extreme things, although I think those tend to be more image/video which I imagine will be a lot harder to really effectively harness ML for.

Nice, thanks! They have Friendica now, which I think is what I'll really need based on my potential audience.

Yeah, I've had no trouble finding hosts for Mastodon. Being the oldest (?) and most popular service (at least until now, not sure what the current stats are) has its advantages.

And easier for those who are technically literate too. I know how to repair my bicycle. It doesn't mean I want to do it every time I'm trying to enjoy a bike ride.

Additionally, my understanding from another discussion is that, right now, Boost will affect the reputation score of the Boosted author's account, while upvote will not. So there's that to consider also.

Thanks. I need to talk to a few other people first, but my current hypothesis is that Frendica is a better fit. The target audience is "old" (i.e. my age) and really likes Facebook. Some (most?) of them don't even know what Reddit is. I'll need to demo kbin for a few people to see if we think the idea has legs.

Fair enough. There was a comment elsewhere in this discussion about not wanting to upvote or boost something they disagree with, and you probably wouldn't want to increase the reputation of somebody you disagree with, regardless of if it actually having any meaning. But you probably also wouldn't want to publicly boost or upvote in that case anyway, just to save a comment/article either.