- cross-posted to:
- fediverse@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- fediverse@lemmy.ml
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about PeerTube, Loops, Bandwagon, and other platforms in the Fediverse that are geared around artists. I might get flamed for this, and you’re welcome to disagree, but I think the network is in dire need of having support for commerce.
Not “Big Capitalism” commerce, but the ability for people to buy and sell things, support projects, and commission their favorite creators to keep making more stuff.
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super necessary if we expect anyone (outside of hobbyists) to even think of putting their content on the fediverse first or at the same time as other platforms
It‘s a two sided blade, but I get what you mean.
On one hand monetization is the thing that ruins platforms for me because it invites grifters and even decent people are becoming obsessed with numbers. Most people see content creation only as a career path and not something to do for fun anymore. I find that depressing at times.
On the other hand we currently live in a capitalist world and have to play by those rules to some extend. I learned most of the things I do for a living from Youtube because professionals do Blender tutorials as a side gig or even for a living. There probably wouldn‘t be nearly as much knowledge out there without this motivator. Or at least not in this form that is easy to understand for me. The official Blender documentation usually isn‘t the first place I‘m searching through when I have a problem.
So I see where you‘re coming from but it‘s a fine line between helpful and loathsome.
I have high hopes for GNU Taler in that regard, as it is in theory super easy to include in any website and makes tipping small sums very feasible.
But in reality it is bogged down by bureocractic hurdles on the banking side, and I am starting to lose a bit of hope due to perpetual delays even after some banks promised to support it as part of an EU grant via Nlnet.
Don’t forget the instance operators! How can we get them more donations?
I recently found out about https://crowdbucks.fund (which is done for the Fediverse) and https://liberapay.com
Maybe a first step would be to offer a native way to link to such donation platforms (link on the user profile, link on each posting, …)
Also donations for the instance should be promoted more prominent.
Maybe it’s just nostalgia but in my opinion, with youtube it went all to shit the moment the money started to be involved. Algorithm chasing, advertisement, reactive content, sponsors, quickly generated videos, … and all the other shit.
So if monetization, then let’s try to avoid same mistakes
One seemingly enormous difference is that YT is a for-profit platform owned by a huge business (Google), not a decentralised network run by many small volunteers. FWIW.
I’m not sure if this translates to the content creators. There’s many of them whom I really like to watch who do (or did) Youtube as a business model. Tom Scott being one example or Derek Muller (Veritasium). I’m subscribed to many more. Simplicissimus and their yet better second channel (in German). We wouldn’t have those without monetization. The platform of course went shit over time. Fortunately my Ad blocker still works and thanks to Sponsorblock my experience is fairly alright… But personally - I’m split on this question. We had quite the amount of entertainment before monetization but I think a large amount of quality content also arrived after that, and because of it. Those people would be working some office job today if it wasn’t to Youtube. And I (and the world) would miss out… On the other hand we got MrBeast, a lot of fake cooking videos…
Really happy to see this discussion here. Here is no “correct” path here, but is deeply important that the one we choose is intentional and thoughtfully considered by the folks these platforms serve
Both their audience and their contributors.
Hey, um … I read your article. Or I tried to.
It lost me at the point where I need to give money to somebody else. So, basically right at the start.To be more specific, your article starts of lamenting that its not convenient enough for me to give money to someone (“content creators”, a bullshit term if I’ve ever heard one) on these federated platforms. “this is a bit of a problem” There’s no examination of whether we should be doing this. Its taken as a given that monetization is a positive goal.
So … I really tried to get there and understand your point, but there’s this vast gulf between us.
Why would it be bad if nobody makes any money off the fediverse?
That sounds good to me.deleted by creator
Not OP, but I’d work real fucking hard to give us something that can be a viable alternative to Youtube where a corporate monopoly doesn’t take 95% of the cash. It doesn’t even need to be federated, but we all see the shithole Odysee immediately became. We have a substantial number of people here with like interests and marginally like feelings on a lot of topics that would make great video content.
Peertube has been around for 7 years, and there isn’t enough content on it to occupy even a Linux nerd for more than 30 minutes a week. People are only making videos on YouTube because they can make some semblance of a living at it.
I think giving people who are willing to create videos some decent tools for monetization in open products would be a reasonably good idea. We have nothing there now; we don’t have anything to lose by it. It’s not like great content that doesn’t exist can be walled off to us.
This could be as easy as forking peertube and putting in patreon privitization links. Or it could be a federated version of KoFi that ties in.
Honestly the best YouTube alternative at the moment is Nebula. The problem is that it’s a closed system. You can’t just make an account and start uploading, you have to be invited. So the range of content is fairly limited compared to YouTube. But unlike many other platforms, it is designed to be fairly general-purpose. There are some excellent individual creators’ platforms, like Dropout, Viva+, Club TWiT, etc. But you only get a single creator/team’s videos on those. Dropout is improv comedy. Viva+ is sketch comedy. Club TWiT is tech news. Whereas Nebula is more of a coop owned by tens of different creators with content including news, media analysis (including film, games, and music), politics, science, short films, game shows, and more. It’s not federated, but it’s independent and worker owned-ish.
I often forget about nebula. I really do like their model. Personally, I think their biggest problem is lacking a free trial. They’re curating, so I expect they’ll have some pretty solid content. But every time I consider them I go and browse their catalog and I don’t recognize most of it, and that what I do recognize is marginally interesting to me, but not worthy of payment.
I suspect their closed model is because it’s very expensive to host that data, and they want to make sure that whoever they put up there is worth spending the money on. Return on investment, yada, yada.
I think their biggest problem is lacking a free trial
They have a 3 day free trial by default. And members can also give out a limited number of “guest passes” which act as a 1 week free trial.
I suspect their closed model is because it’s very expensive to host that data, and they want to make sure that whoever they put up there is worth spending the money on
That’s probably part of it. It’s also a marketing tactic. They’re positioning themselves as a premium service. They want customers to know that if something is on Nebula it’s going to be good. Similar to the way Apple positions themselves as premium by not selling a $200 smartphone, or Mercedez-Benz, or Louis-Vuitton.
It’s also about trust. One of the things they’re trying to do with Nebula is to provide creators a space to safely discuss controversial topics without censorship. But with that, along with the fact that they have a coop-type structure, comes the need to be able to trust that the people uploading on their platform aren’t gonna be Nazis.
Well look at that, last time I checked it was guest pass or nothing. good move on their part!
I’ll have to give them a shot after the holidays.
I’ll be honest, if you’ve looked at their catalogue already and it didn’t appeal to you, that’s unlikely to change after a free trial. If you do end up signing up though, make sure to go through one of the creators’ URLs. You get a much better price that way.
For me, when I first signed up for it 2 or 3 years ago, the thing that finally made me pull the trigger was Tom Scott’s Money, the social game show that was, at the time, Nebula-exclusive. But there were probably 5 or 6 other channels I already regularly watched on YouTube too, like Wendover/HAI, Lindsay Ellis (who has since basically left YouTube and exclusively uses Nebula), and Patrick H Willems. And in the time since, they’ve added like 10 or more channels that I already watched on YouTube, such as Not Just Bikes, Angela Collier, TLDR News, Legal Eagle, and Tantacrul. It’s also helped me rediscover creators I once watched but stopped for no particular reason, like Cult Tennis (which is fantastic even though I have no real interest in the sport of tennis otherwise) and Medlife Crisis; and new channels I first discovered thanks to Nebula, like CityNerd, Linus Boman, and ReligionForBreakfast; and channels I had seen once or twice on YouTube but never regularly watched, but Nebula made me realise are regularly putting out good stuff, like People Make Games (if you haven’t seen it already, I assume their two videos about the Rockstar union busting are on YouTube and highly recommend those) and Razbuten.
Thanks for the thorough write-up.
It’s not so much that it doesn’t appeal; it’s more like I’m looking at a menu in a foreign language.
I’m middle-aged, I like science, tech, retro, gaming, and whatever VLDL is. I am open-minded to new things, but prefer substance over screaming and outrage. I’ve spent a lot of time sifting through Odysee and Peertube for anything redeeming, and while I’ve not come up empty-handed, I’ve also not found enough content to offset my YouTube habit enough to walk away from the platform (my goal). The service is half the monthly price of Netflix, and while I don’t expect a production company full of quality entertainment, I’d like to be able to fill a couple of hours a day with vaguely interesting programming.
I’ll check em out post holidays pass and my finances recover.
deleted by creator
Patreon kinda fits that, but I’m not sure about their open-sourceness
OpenCollective is a pretty solid open source contender in my experience. It’s not perfect, but it’s definitely workable.
There is nothing stopping anyone from running ads and making deals with creators.
There is nothing stopping creators and hosters from accepting payments via Monero.
Also, we should stop trying to figure out how to make other people money.
Client side support for a tipping link (Koffee, Patreon, crypto wallet, whatever the user’s choice is) that is built in to the UI would go a long way.
Agree, no need to over-engineer this…
As he over-engineers it.
“Built-in to the UI” could literally just be a wallet link in a sidebar.
Keep it away is my strong advice. Having to deal with banks will mean having to deal with regulations. Having to deal with crypto means having to deal with crytpo bros. Having to deal with paywalls is a barrier to entry
The internet was a better place without money touching everything!
I don’t have strong feelings either way, but money does touch everything, overtly or not, when it comes to civilisation. Time spent volunteering on Fediverse projects is effectively money spent (at least to some degree), and instances cost time & fees to maintain.
But I guess to argue against myself-- you have to think that without some kind of ongoing responsible oversight, then the worst aspects of capitalism might predictably find a way to screw it all up if left to its own devices. Then again, maybe the scale involved makes that less likely. *shrug*
Yeah, I get it. Volunteers’ time should be valued. But, there is more to valuing than money is my counter: authority, respect, community engagement, and a fraternal/paternal element
I salute all mods. And I pay for admins
Having to deal with crypto means having to deal with crytpo bros
The internet was also a better place when people using it were more open minded
Open minded to being scammed? No thanks.
Your argument sounds like “pc are bads because of virus”
If 99.9% of PCs were solely made to steal your credit card info, then yes.
Most of crypto volume is done on bitcoin and ethereum network which are built to be less scammy than a bank. You could indeed argue that 99.9% of existing cryptocurrencies are scam because there are thousand existing projects that imitates bitcoin, similarly one could argue that 99.9% iphones copies are a scam
lmao, the blockchain that popularized NFTs is less scammy than a bank? touch grass
Bitcoin and ethereum blockchains are built to be open, public and decentralized. The difference between these and a bank could be compared to the difference between reddit and lemmy. Is reddit a scam? Perhaps not on a large scale but it has all the potential to become a scam once its executives decide to do so. Lemmy is not owned by a single person which makes it way more harder to “control”.
Bitcoin and Ethereum only have liquidity in the market because scammers use it for their pig butchering etc. scams. And all the major exchanges are complicit in that. Many Banks are scammy, yes, but not that scammy by a long shot. Sorry to burst your bubble 🤷
Maybe this is a pipedream but I think mods should be paid for their labor.
A free and direct tip system that doesn’t force you to use credit cards would be quite useful
I tried to use a gift certificate to donate to dbzer0 last night. It didn’t work because of a zip code field. I just want to look at cat pictures and make a snarky comment every so often without a facist paramilitary kicking in my front door. Fuck me, right?
If you allow artists to display their work in various communities along with the ability to post links in their profiles, but you restrict actual posts to disallow self-promotion, it’s the best of both worlds, IMO.
In other words, if you can’t include self-promotion in your community posts, but everyone knows you have the links in your profile, it attracts less grifters and keeps the feed clean, while allowing anyone interested to contact a poster directly or ask them promotional questions via DMs.
That said, hosting a full-fledged marketplace is not a good idea, IMO. There are laws and banks involved, which mean lawyers and taxes, and volunteer management does not work for that. There are already marketplaces that do that well, and allowing artists to post their own links of choice in their profiles will let them steer actual business to other platforms, while keeping the fediverse for display, review, share and critique. My opinion, anyway.
