In many ways, Mastodon feels like rewinding the clock on social media back to the early days of Twitter and Facebook. On the consume side, that means that your home feed has no algorithm (this can be disorienting at first).

Practically, it means that you see only what you want to see and only see it linearly. You never wonder “why am I seeing this and how do I make it go away?”. Content can only enter your home feed via your followed tags or handles and the feed is linear like the early days of social media.

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[–] Izzy 125 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (68 children)

Put it simply I just hate ads. Anything that puts in ads is terrible. Including Sync for Lemmy who seems to have completely missed the point of getting the hell away from Reddit.

The next terrible thing is automatically generated content and bots, but I guess those are also really just ads.

[–] [email protected] 72 points 1 year ago (15 children)

I disagree. I hate ads with a passion too. But as long as we can pay a sum to remove it, it is fair to have a free option with ads. A kinda unlimited "demo".

We are fools for thinking anyone would give away their own time and effort for free forever. We have completely lost the perspective of how much things should cost because of how much we've taken for granted that was paid for with our personal data. And the biggest fools is those who think most software developers and server admins can live reliably on donations alone.

Though Youtube is taking the ads a bit far, maybe. One shouldn't scare away users before they have even become customers.

[–] ryncewynd 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Absolutely agree with your comment.

I don't really know the solution either... I can't afford to pay for all the things I enjoy online.

I was considering supporting 1 Twitch streamer I enjoy until I saw subscription cost. And if I paid that for every streamer or YouTuber I enjoy, I'd be broke in a single day lol.

I get so much incredibly good info and discussions online about my hobbies, all for no charge.

I used to subscribe on Patreon to my most useful resources/people, but in the end I just could afford it and had to cancel all my Patreon

I hate ads but I don't understand how the internet would function without ads. No one could afford it

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I'm not rich enough to pay for every site and service either. A site like rockpapershotgun I left when it paywalled most of its contents, it wasn't important enough to me to pay for. I've never paid for reddit, but i probably should have by how much i used it. Not that I will do that after what they've pulled lately. I donate to a fediverse server to put my money where my mouth is and at least pay for what I want to keep alive.

[+] Izzy -10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It would take some adjustment, but ads and data harvesting are the core problem to the enshiftification of the entire internet. You can't have it both ways. We have this endless game of cat and mouse where we keep moving to the next platform after the last one becomes unusable due to ads and data harvesting.

You have to draw the line somewhere to end this pointless cycle and it is either pay for software and services or have people do only what they want to when they want to (FOSS). It really doesn't cost that much if it isn't attempting to compete with other software that grew with ad and data harvesting money.

[–] ryncewynd 11 points 1 year ago

I think you're wildly underestimating the cost of people's time, resources, infrastructure etc

"You can't have it both ways" is exactly right. If the internet was user funded, as in, the user subscribes to every website or internet service they wish to use, then the internet would probably stop existing. (maybe I'm being too dramatic but also maybe not)

What's the true cost of YouTube without ads or data harvesting? Probably only the rich could afford a subscription, which in turn would destroy the platform user base.

[–] Geert 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's not because Lemmy is FOSS it doesn't cost any money. Infrastructure costs and the time invested by those that help the fediverse grow is a cost too. Be it the time invested by the people running instances or those writing custom ui's, tools and yes even Lemmy apps. And if some people prefer to be compensated what's wrong with that? You think the Lemmy devs are doing it for free?

[–] Izzy 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't see the relevance to my opinion that ads are bad, but it is an opinion that Lemmy developers also share. Also for the 1000th time there is nothing wrong with selling software. I just disagree with ads and data harvesting.

[–] Geert 2 points 1 year ago

Then simply don't use sync and use a free option. Lemmy developers are being paid...

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