Why YSK: Getting along in a new social environment is easier if you understand the role you’ve been invited into.
It has been said that “if you’re not paying for the service, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.”
It has also been said that “the customer is always right”.
Right here and now, you’re neither the customer nor the product.
You’re a person interacting with a website, alongside a lot of other people.
You’re using a service that you aren’t being charged for; but that service isn’t part of a scheme to profit off of your creativity or interests, either. Rather, you’re participating in a social activity, hosted by a group of awesome people.
You’ve probably interacted with other nonprofit Internet services in the past. Wikipedia is a standard example: it’s one of the most popular websites in the world, but it’s not operated for profit: the servers are paid-for by a US nonprofit corporation that takes donations, and almost all of the actual work is volunteer. You might have noticed that Wikipedia consistently puts out high-quality information about all sorts of things. It has community drama and disputes, but those problems don’t imperil the service itself.
The folks who run public Lemmy instances have invited us to use their stuff. They’re not business people trying to make a profit off of your activity, but they’re also not business people trying to sell you a thing. This is, so far, a volunteer effort: lots of people pulling together to make this thing happen.
Treat them well. Treat the service well. Do awesome things.
People should also remember that it costs money for these servers to exist. So if you enjoy using it, try to support the service by donating to your instance, contributing to open source projects, spreading the gospel, etc.
Couldn’t agree more, we need to continue to attract the kind of people who would really be able to help grow this kind of community, so if you have friends you think would like this, try talking to them.
Drop a couple bucks into support the admins and servers - think about streaming services you pay for and use less. $5-10/month to donate to a service you are using daily is pretty cheap considering.
I know a lot of people hate it but I wonder if crypto/digital donation would work. All you would need is a separate wallet setup to pay the host every month. Maybe even have a graph/chart showing how much is in the wallet vs how much the monthly bill is.
One problem with cryptocurrency is that instead of being coupled with mainstream banks (where workers get their pay deposited) it is instead coupled with speculative assets employed by criminals. As such, choosing to work on accepting cryptocurrency instead of working on accepting real-money donations ties the service to a crime economy instead of a mainstream economy.
So you are saying that HSBC getting caught helping launder cartel money at the teller is fake news?
USD Is still the preferred currency of criminals across the world and even more so they use assets like paintings to facilitate non traceable payment and smuggle extremely large dollar amounts. They also use art work to launder money.
I’d suggest you pull your head out of your ass and get on the crypto train because it’s leaving you behind. Look at btc, ltc, dash and others.
Good thing criminals never use cash, otherwise you could call the world economy criminal.
To add. USD hasn’t been backed by a real asset in nearly a century. It was once backed by gold but now the only thing backing it is full faith in the USA. At the moment that means something, it might not always.
You need to educate yourself on this stuff because you sound like a moron.
The difference is that the entire world economy would need to collapse for the US dollar to be worthless. Crypto can become worthless because some 22-year-old video game addict steals everyone’s deposit.
I’m dirt poor but I’ve donated to Wikipedia at least three times now. I use that website so often, it’s changed my life.
Beehaw has a periodic financial update. It would be great if each instance had a similar kind of update so that we can understand what is needed and where to help.
Nope. You’re the USER. A concept that is as old as computing and yet has gone completely by the wayside recently with the corporate monopolization of the internet.
Good to see it making a comeback.
USER
WARNING: INCOMING GAME
The only way to win is not to play
“Do awesome things”
BEANS
“Do things awesome”
BEANS
Quick question: I have an account on Lemmy.world and kbin.social… When trying to post on Lemmy.world it just spins and posts… so I bopped over to my kbin account and one thing I noticed is that Kbin says it has 39 comments, but Lemmy.world this same post has 139… how do I square this circle?
Actually, this is not necessarily true. Because it is open source doesn’t mean it cannot be commercial. I can happily imagine that with the future rise of spam, porn, and other nasties, I would happily pay small amount of money for well moderated, clean experience.
I couldn’t happily imagine such a future personally. Thankfully its possible to block instances without having to pay for the privilege.
The comparison to Wikipedia is a really good one.
Thank you for the reminder, it’s a breeze of fresh air with all transparency on this platform that’s we’re not used to - coming from Reddit. I can only hope that this “movement” persists and that lemmy or any similar fediverse app will eventually become the norm. It certainly feels inevitable to me, having seen that the grass is greener on this side
Thanks a lot for the post! Super nice to hear. Would also like to point out that “the customer is always right” was originally meant for sales. I.e. if they want a meat themed car, sell it to them, dont tell them its in bad taste. So for more ways than one treat those that serve you with respect. Theyre serving the community, not your servants.
I honestly think more instances should support some sort of donation or explicit customer model. Running such things is expensive, and sourcing money when things are ran for free is hard, so these kinds of platforms tend to be ran out of pocket, which makes them somewhat volatile. We don’t need to repeat the mistakes of big platforms and instead should build something sustainable from the get go.
I think lemmy should do what Lichess.org does, which is: Give an icon to donators/patrons. That is all, just an icon. It is surprisingly effective. For example, see this: https://lichess.org/@/thibault. The wing, before his username is the icon to which I am referring. it is visible site-wide.
This is so sweet and wholesome that I might faint from a sugar OD!
On the Fediverse you are a user, not a customer, not a product.
and that’s ok for a change
We’re all guests in an apartment building with an open door policy in a village of apartment buildings.
Help out your building owners with the utility costs if ya can, design some cool apartments for others to experience and visit, but most importantly: take care of your neighbors and commune with each other to grow a stronger community
Mostly what I feel is gratitude. Personally, I don’t have the skills, technical knowledge, or free time required to run even a small instance. I know I’m relying on the generosity of others, which makes me much more tolerant of delays, glitches, etc.
“If you’re not paying for the service, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.”
I see this everywhere, it’s the logical fallacy equivalent of “everything that’s rare has value”.
I’m sure most people, on the top of their head, can think of at least 3 products that are free to use and aren’t engineered to leverage their private information (Wikipedia anyone?)
What is true though, is that if you’re not paying for the product or service, SOMEBODY ELSE definitely is. So the question is: “who is paying for me? And why are they paying for me? What is at stake for them?”
I think the part that’s missing is that this advice is related to companies, not in general. If the company is making a profit, and not asking you to pay, where is the money coming from?
This post missed the most important part people should know: someone is footing the bill for you to use this service. If you’re not paying, they will make their money in whatever what they choose. Potential resulting in you becoming the product. Yes, even on lemmy. So if your instance mod needs funding, kick em a few bucks, be their customer.
Yes, and this will foster large instances, similarly to the Mastodon project, which means a concentration of power, which means easy targets for billionaires.
This is similar to presidential regimes: they can be useful temporarily in a “move fast, break things” motto (see France trying to be perceived as a “winner” of the Second World war after having constitutionally given the full powers to the Pétain Marshall, who then decided to collaborate with Nazis) but they’re much easier to corrupt and they make it much easier to say, privatize every public service than a parliamentary one.
You don’t want power concentration or the billionaires will come for you.
kick em a few bucks, be their customer.
Better yet, be their partner.
