Technology
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.
Rules:
1: All Lemmy rules apply
2: Do not post low effort posts
3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff
4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.
5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)
6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist
7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed
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The few people actually contributing to the platform within the sea of lurkers and bots helped Reddit attain the value it has today, and has been a useful tool to attract investors.
I do agree that people have unrealistic expectations about the stuff they're getting in exchange for ads they block anyway, but Reddit wouldn't have existed if it weren't for mods and users doing Reddit's work for free.
It's also important to consider that a significant amount of the audience has grown up with things being given to them for free. Whether you got your start online from MSN, MySpace, Youtube, or Reddit, free online services gambling with VC money have been the norm for any sizeable platform for decades now.
It's ridiculous of course and anybody budgeting a normal business will know this stuff is unsustainable, but kids, teenagers, and young adults have been made to believe thst they can just get video hosting and complex social networks like Reddit for free. Most people don't know that ads are worth thousands to millionths it a cent and that the glorious profit margins platforms like Reddit are publishing are all flowing back into loads the company has taken out years ago.
I'm pretty sure it's part of the strategy; nobody likes platforms thst openly admit thst they're not viable businesses without millions of loans or injections, so companies don't talk about this stuff to their users.
Here on Lemmy things are different; public servers run on donations are publicly staying how much money is coming in and how much money keeping stuff online is costing. Just one script kiddie with a grudge is making the masses dump lemmy.world (because if you create an account you're entitled to a disruption free service forever) but nobody thinks about the huge investments commercial platforms have made to stay up in the face of much larger attacks.
Now that the economy is turning and VC money is drying up, every service floating on free magic money is starting to charge people for subscriptions. The response is clear: nobody wants to pay for anything, everything should be free, and ads are unacceptable. Self hosting is too hard, everything needs to have an app ready, and platforms in beta (like Lemmy, two months ago) must be able to compete with Reddit or people will take their stolen memes elsewhere.
It's sad thst ut has come to this. Then again, maybe these sites are just filled with broke people and kids, that would explain why a six dollar subscription to watch terabytes if video is too much for the people here on the internet.