this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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Fact is, the Lemmy ecosystem needs money to handle the growing server reqirements as more people migrate as well as the development cost of new features (I know Lemmy is OSS but the devs should still get some compensation for their effort).

Seeing how much some reddit users love awards so much that they cant stop giving money to Reddit to award posts protesting the api change, this could be a great way for users to voluntary support the ecosystem. It can be easily ignored by users not caring about them (clients could even add an option to hide them), but users liking the feature can go wild and this time the money goes to volunteers keeping this alive instead of greedy admins, power mods and investors.

Though there would be some big organization questions attached: attached:

  • Which server handles the payment? A centralized one, the one where the post was made or the one where the user giving the award account was created.
  • How will the money be shared between the Devs and the individual instances in a way that is fair but cant be abused easily.
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[–] [email protected] 97 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think it's a distraction from the actual interactions. Same way karma is.

I'm all for supporting instances and open source developers, but any kind of reward for a donation creates wrong incentives. Donation is called a donation because it's a gift without expecting something in return.

[–] ulu_mulu 19 points 1 year ago

I fully agree with you, karma "whoring" is a serious problem on reddit, awards could lead to the same behavior here if implemented.

Donations are the best way to support the platform, if you want to be "visible" as donator, opencollective allows you to post a message about it, there's also a sort of top donators page, that's more than enough in my opinion.

[–] lesnake 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can understand the mindset, but I worry most people don't think like this.

The thing is, that small rewards for "donations" will likely make the people much more willing to spend money in the first place. Even if it's as small as a sticker on someone else's post that costs the servers involved like a handful of API calls. But when a 1€ award is 3x as popular as the 1€ donation, it will greatly increase the funds available to the instance and, hence better servers, more features etc

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[–] murphys_lawyer 96 points 1 year ago (19 children)

Could we like, not immediately talk about monetisation 1 month after leaving reddit? If you want to support your instance host, you can ask for a way to donate.

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[–] nxfsi 77 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't want the comments section to look like the inner cabinet of the North Korean army

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[–] justhach 50 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can we leave the karma system and awards with Reddit? Allowing voting in comment sections for pseudo-moderation by the users is good, but when it turns into a scoring system the conversation devolves into a competition to see who can craft the most palatable opinion to get the most imaginary internet points.

Despite all my thoughtful and helpful comments I made in my 11 years on reddit, you know what my top comment was?

  • Comes in
  • Kills the Queen
  • Tanks the economy
  • Leaves

What a legacy.

47k updoots, and 27 awards.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago

I never cared for them on Reddit and used third party tools to remove or hide them.

I don't like that they can be used to shop visibility.

I would like that it gives an opportunity to fund instances but I would hope we could discover another way to do this.

[–] Tigerfishy 33 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm really not looking for a Reddit replica. And um, being rewarded for a good comment isn't really something I need. Or anyone needs. I think getting a cookie for a good comment can be left behind

Edit to add - I should have read the rest of the post more carefully, but I stand by my initial sentiment. Money needs to be funneled into those working hard on this, but I don't know, I don't want more and more Reddit features coming out

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You've been awarded lemmy gold!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

“Thank you, kind stranger”

[–] Rob 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Edit: Wow, I didn't expect this to take off like this. Thanks for all the upvotes! xD

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Edit 2: I can't believe I'm getting so many updates, thank you everyone!!!!!

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just donate if you want to support your server.

Awards are special actions reserved for people who pay, that don't improve the platform anyway. It's enshittification.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

It baffles me how people seem fixated on the gamification of a discussion and payment system, as if somehow we're not adults who can see that the servers cost money, they provide us value, and we should help defray the costs (directly, through donations/payments). Clear/transparent information on instance costs and available funding is all we really need. For the instance owners it would be nice to have some built in code to provide this as a common location so they can disseminate the info with as little additional effort as possible, ideally with hooks to several payment systems they can connect - esp given the global nature of the platform.

[–] Womble 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Because, sadly, it works. Humans are social animals and gaining and displaying status is hard wired into us. You might not be interested in status in this way (but there are likely others just as irrational that you do), but enough people are such that this would likely generate a lot more money than just donations.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Appealing to and reinforcing toxic aspects human nature is always a shitty argument. Whatever we're trying to do here let's not be regressive

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[–] sma3in 24 points 1 year ago

please no!! reddit looked like las vegas with that award system. terrible idea!

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

this

Edit: thank you for the gold, kind dear gentlesir or gentlemadame.

Edit2: wow I never expected to wake up to so many awards, who'd knew my most updooted comment would be about this?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

Eew please god no.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I pass. Gamifying social interactions leads to abuse and lowers the quality of posts, comments, reports, etc. It's a streamlined path to enshittification.

Only user-provided 🏅🐭 awards here, at most.

[–] oxf 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Even "user-provided awards" should be kept out. It provides nothing substantial to the conversation.

It's like saying "This 👆", "I agree", or "Take my upvote!", all of which can be expressed by simply voting on the comment, which actually has an impact.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The growing server requirements..

I think like 99% of people picked accounts on the top 10 servers, and there are hundreds of more servers out there that have only a few users. Why do you all flock to the same server (Lemmy.world in particular) and then go "shit this is getting expensive guys". :)

Fediverse. Federated. Not Centralized. Not Reddit.

This technology supports speeding out, so many people (instance admins) share the costs.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

I hate the idea very much. Thanks for asking.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I am more for going on with donations, with some kind of useless leader board for volunteering activities, to introduce some kind of "safe" and fun gamification.

I have no idea what this could be, I am not very good in creating games

[–] Buffalox 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Absolutely, use the Wikipedia model, ask for donations with a target to cover cost.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Can't we just stick with normal donations instead of turning this place into a sea of rainbow vomit.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Could be a good way to fund servers, but I'm not sure how they can make it not sketchy as fuck. No way I'm trusting payment info to some random dudes server.

Wouldn't mind having a safe option to throw a dollar or 2 to a favorite server and get a nice shiny badge on the profile.

[–] MargotRobbie 14 points 1 year ago
[–] Nima 14 points 1 year ago

Please no rewards. This is not reddit. I think a donation system would be much better way to go about it.

Let the content and conversations just happen. It's more organic that way.

[–] jacktherippah 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't want to see award speeches here on Lemmy. For example: OMG! THANK YOU FOR THE GOLD KIND STRANGER!!!!1111

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[–] DreadTowel 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Lemmy core devs are actually employed full time to work on lemmy.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why don't server admins open OpenCollective accounts or something similar. It seems to work on Mastodon. I would be willing to pitch in to help finance the instance I'm on.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Your instance admin has https://www.buymeacoffee.com/tedvdb
You can verify the link here: https://feddit.nl/u/tedvdb

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[–] Tronn4 10 points 1 year ago

No awards please

[–] Alula 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I don’t believe that awards should exist on comments or posts, but i do want the devs to gain some money off of this.

The best choice would probably be for them to set up ways to donate to them in my opinion .

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[–] samokosik 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have never used it on reddit. I have always found them useless

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I've never wanted anything less in my life.

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