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Why haven't we figured out monetisation for peertube?
(programming.dev)
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this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2024
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A few reasons:
I've added support for crowdfunding to Communick earlier this year, and even people who are active on the Fediverse and have a vested interest in having monetization alternatives turned it down. This is why all we see are these completely fringe ideas that can only appeal for the get-rich-quick crowd.
And a significant part will remain so. This should be a haven from capitalist/corporate platforms, not a parallel market.
Community is not enough
I'm still doggedly working on Communick and on AP-based projects because I believe in open standards and because it is our best shot at us collectively take back the web. But if we continue on this idea that the Fediverse is somehow "better" because it discriminates against small business owners, or professionals who want an online presence to promote their work, or anything that resembles "profit-motive", then this whole thing will forever remain a wasted opportunity, and we will be (once again) be giving it all away for Zuckerberg.
What we have now is just a Tyranny of the Minority. We need to grow the open web. That includes getting normies here. That includes getting people who are not part of your tribe. This includes getting people that you are able to ignore.
But normies ruin everything!
This is a matter of perspective.
That's Western fediverse.
Fediverse instance in Asia often run ads or other kind of monetisation. Like the second biggest instance.
Could you elaborate, please. I'm genuinely interested
Misskey, which is Japanese-made ActivityPub-enabled social media software, has option to enable ads natively for instance admin.
In most cases, the ads are just non-tracking community ads, like promoting YouTube channel, indie animation, pop-up cafe event, or server hosting service. Usually the ads are matched to instance theme.
People realize that running instances needs money and letting the instance admin to make living from it is acceptable. Having monthly patron oftentimes not enough.
This is different case and country. There are plenty of dead fedi instance from Southeast Asia because the donation itself is not enough as the culture of donation is not the same as Western countries. Most people will just simply use free social media and thinking ads are good tradeoff.
Thanks. I didn't know this and it is very useful information.
Unpopular opinion: people who think federated platforms shouldn't deal with money are just people who want someone else to pay for them.
Could you expand on that? Why do you believe such is the case?
I'm starting to get the impression that this is the biggest hindrance. That and the common misconception that "ads = monetisation", which IMO big tech has hammered into users very well.
True, but it doesn't have to stay that way.
Probably better tools could contribute to that. Something opensource that allows engaging with all major platforms + peertube and others could swing things in another direction. Imagine if peertube, mastodon, and so forth were just a toggle or a "sign up" form in the app. It could increase adoption by its simplicity: "Never heard of this platform, but I'll just enable it and see what happens" could very well be possible.
Wait a minute... I think I recognise that! Didn't you make a post that was massively downvoted (or received negatively), because people didn't understand what you were trying to do? "If it's not steady income I won't use it" is something I recall...
Edit: Lemmy is missing the feature to favorite other users :/
Anti Commercial-AI license
Go take a look at all Mastodon instances that ask for donations to keep running: you will see that all of them get at most 2% of their user base to donate. No donation-based instance is big enough that it can afford to pay FTE salaries for moderation and/or administration. And this is for something that affects people directly when they don't contribute.
Go take a look at some youtubers in the "1M-10M" subscriber range that have a Patreon. You will see that the most of them manage to convert 0.5% to 0.8% of their subscribers into direct contributors.
The open web (ActivityPub sans Facebook) is now at ~1 million active users. Even if we got 2% of these users to contribute $5/month to different creators, we are talking about a "Total Addressable Market" of $100k/month. Even with "best case" numbers, it is just too low to be attractive to a substantial number of creators. Compare with Youtube: it's estimated that they paid out around 7 billion USD to all its creators in 2023.
Thanks for doing the maths. Actually, it does show that there's a small, but unexploited market here. $2-3K a month is a very good income for the most of the world. And this doesn't have to be the only revenue stream.
I really don't see how you can get to this conclusion. We can only get to the $100k/month figure by using unreasonably optimistic numbers for revenue potential. A more realistic figure would be 0.5% of the MAU donating $2/month, which brings it down to $15k/month. That would be enough to support maybe 5 creators?
The market is just to small to be relevant. I think we might even see more people setting peertube accounts as an alternative, but no sensible creator is interested in leaving Youtube.
Even if so, your unreasonably pessimistic assumption is that this would be an exclusive source of revenue. Once content is created, cross-posting is free.
The point is that no one will be creating content with the primary target of putting it in Peertube, much less "exclusively".
Yeah, creators maybe can get some extra revenue by turning some monetization feature on Peertube, but the same could be said about "just use liberapay", "just use flattr" (RIP), "just use OpenCollective" and even "just go ask in the streets".