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Can we have some clarification on what "Usage Data" the app collects and shares with advertisers?
(lemmy.world)
What constitutes Usage Data. Is it sharing the posts I view, communities I subscribe to etc?
Does paying for a premium version stop this data being collected?
There are plenty of apps for Lemmy, that aren't supported by ads, nor should they be, given the whole ethos of the fediverse..
The ethos of the fediverse (insofar as it's completely free with no ads) won't be sustainable at scale; income for continued development and support does need to be taken into account at some point, and that goes for servers, frontends, apps, etc. Funding from donations only gets you so far.
However, it is entirely too soon for ads and subscriptions. This feels openly and brazenly like talking advantage of Sync overly enthusiastic fanclub and the Sync name recognition. Get in early with a big name and start making money before any other big name apps like Boost are released.
People have been saying some variant of "the fediverse won't work at scale if it stays free and without ads" for a decade now. And yet it keeps growing despite remaining free and without ads.
What scale is it at and what scale are we comparing it to? For Lemmy the comparison is reddit, and there is absolutely no way donations would cover the sheer cost of compute required to compete with a user base of that size.
I'm not going to bother looking into the numbers but I'm thinking all of the fediverse together doesn't even come close to that user base.