Hacker News Reader

Comment by riffic | Hacker News Reader

ads, vc, data harvesting and brokerage, managed services (hosting, infra) on a subscription model offered to orgs?

the ethical model is obviously ActivityPub tho

adding more than snark to my reply: I want to know if the PBLLC intends to submit this protocol to the IETF or W3C. We do the RFC thing for a reason folks.

View on HN

How do ActivityPub/Mastodon servers monetize (or stay online)? Same way?

they typically don’t. this seems to be why many of the users prefer it. i think i generally agree with them—it leads to a different style of interaction. i haven’t figured out yet how to elequently describe it, but the interactions and experience is entirely different from a for-profit site. it feels “more pure” or something (though i do recognize why description is inadequate.)

when “how do we monetize this?” becomes the driving force of a social thing, the experience changes in very real ways.

I felt that same feeling in ~2009 when I first joined Facebook, before it had ads. I think new communities in general tend to feel more "pure" in the beginning. Of course keeping that intimacy long term is the challenge.

I think that is pretty fair, but maybe I am more interested in the "keeping it running" component. Labor of love and donations can only go so far. When a env/population outpaces love and donations, what keeps the servers online? Does the decentralized nature of Mastodon minimize cost? Or has it just not reached a critical mass?

Im more interested in the Mastodon/Bluesky approach to re-decentralizing (we had thriving forums long ago). But eventually cost does add up and monetization (or a benevolent benefactor) has to be considered.

in general they're either labors of love or they run on a donation basis. it's a really good question.

They don't.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com