That’s actually quite common in large companies, just recently I read this story:
Back then, there was close to zero collaboration between divisions at Microsoft […] In late 2013, my team was building Skype for Web, which we positioned as a competitor to Google Hangouts. We had a problem, though: in order to start a video or voice call, users needed to download a plugin which contained the required video codecs. We noticed Google Hangouts did the same on Internet Explorer and Firefox, but not on Chrome because the plugin was bundled with the browser for a frictionless experience. […] My team decided we had to offer the same frictionless experience on Microsoft’s latest browser, Edge, which was in development at the time. […] the team politely and firmly rejected bundling our plugin into the new Microsoft browser. The reason? Their KPI was to minimize the download size of the browser, and helping us would not help them reach that goal.
I wouldn’t mind having some ads, but I wonder how some more extremists users would react.
But I strongly believe that depending on donations is a very tough place to be, it places the burden of “begging” on the instance owners, which are already doing all the work and should definitely be compensated somehow.
Do you really think Lemmy could handle the amount of people that Reddit has?
As far as I know the existing instances are usually running on capacity and always in need of donations, and that’s when the owner isn’t handling the costs themselves. I’m not sure how well most instances have right now.
Maybe Lemmy would benefit of some way to get people to pay, such as purchasing the ability to give people awards etc. like Reddit. Despite being useless stuff, it might provide some fun that would make hardcore users want to pay. But for that to work out, all apps would also need to show the posts awarded in a different way, so I think that’s unlikely.
But the point is that without a business model, the Fediverse will only be able to handle a limited number of enthusiasts before it faces scaling problems.
And don’t forget the dollar being used as reserve around the world, or as international currency, which makes the dollar a strong currency. But this has been changing.
That’s exactly how I felt when Bolsonaro was in power in Brazil. He at least became ineligible for being responsible for our equivalent of the capitol invasion in Brasília, and is possibly going to jail.
It still baffles me that the US is supposed to be a country where laws work more strictly, and yet everything Trump did in his previous term—from obstruction of justice to inciting the January 6th Capitol riot—seems to have been met with limited accountability. How can a nation uphold its democratic principles if the mechanisms designed to check power are perceived as being selectively applied?
All of this talk is actually ignoring the very fundamental aspect of this sort of transaction: trust.
When you buy from a place, you do it because you trust the store or the service to handle problems [1]. I remember one saying that a purchase is actually a very intimate relationship, and if you have any reason to think that person or service would screw up over, you’d never engage in any monetary transactions with them.
A marketplace where anyone can sell only works because despite your diligence to look for reputable sellers, the platform usually offers some assurance that you’ll be refunded for any type of scam, which means they take on the burden of doing some quality control on approving sellers. At least that’s how it works in Brazil, I suppose that a country with a high societal trust might have less of this problem, but the incentives are the heart of any system.
[1] Sure, sometimes it doesn’t go the way you wanted it and you can end up being screwed by the service, but the expectation was there.
If it involves money, it has the incentive to game the system. So each instance would be dealing with multiple attempts from actors adding fake reviews, sabotaging competitors, endless spam etc. If it can be easily automated, the service would be 24/7 filled with AI spam and drive away all users, defeating the purpose entirely.
The only trustworthy reviews are from people who actually bought the product in the website, because then it has a negative incentive to spend that much money for one fake review.
There is something about the simplicity of this kind of thing that makes it so attractive. There’s no bloat, just a device for a maker individual to play around with.
But it makes me wonder if there’s something similar to this but more “ready” for people to buy and play around building software. I’ve thought about learning more low level stuff with emulators, not a real device. A real device like this with a minimal Unix-like OS and some development kit to play around would be interesting.
Yeah definitely. I just heee to disable social media and anything that’s based on addictive behavior, algorithmic feed etc. and I automatically start doing more interesting things online, such as read Wikis of subjects I like, play with programming etc.
The problem is everything that’s driven by engagement and made to keep you scrolling artificially is toxic by consequence.
This could be solved in other ways. For example, the software can simply track what % of the books are actually read without this extra step of borrowing and returning. Just like when you listen to music on streaming services.
Imagine if you had to select the specific album in a streaming service and choose to borrow it for x days, having to “return” it and borrow again if you wanted to keep listening, and being limited to 4 albums at a time.
Like… if the book is digital, why do you have to borrow and return? This makes no sense. They want to replicate a bad experience that doesn’t need to exist, what’s the point of that?
At the same time, they unfortunately can’t imagine things being better. That’s why societies differ a lot between cultures in different parts of the world.
Doing it silently without consent is definitely not okay. Or if they do such a thing, they should notify the user and give an option to rollback if they wanted. That’s what a company that respect users would do.
That’s actually quite common in large companies, just recently I read this story: