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.
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.
kick em a few bucks, be their customer.
Better yet, be their partner.
That’s a bit much, I’m not looking to get into a relationship here. /s
What about… comrade?
You’re right, what am I talking about. Updates relationship status: In a Federationship
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I purchased Apollo and also subscribed to Reddit premium as I was a heavy user and wanted to contribute my fair share. Happy to until…of course. Looks like a much better value here - an actual community. Worth my money (like Wiki too!)
Well put. Take my lemmy lemon🍋
Lemmy Lemon is an amazing concept, plz make real 🙏
what is it?
No one knows what it means, but it’s provocative… It gets the people going!
are we lemoning now?
It’s gonna be a real lemon party!
Just don’t invite the whores, I hear they steal lemons…
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
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.
It’s like hanging out at a friend’s house. Follow their rules.
One of my favourite things about early days Reddit was it’s growing community of positivity. There was actual encouragement to be nice to each other and subreddits were built around celebrating stuff.
Negativity was downvoted into oblivion so you never saw that stuff on the All page and popular pages.
I’m seeing the same thing with Lemmy right now and hope it continues long into the future. The lack of profiteering should really help with this.
This is open source. We are neither products nor customers - we are all test subjects.
“Do awesome things”
BEANS
On the Fediverse you are a user, not a customer, not a product.
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.
I’m actually paying monthly to help with server costs. What am I?
You’re one of the awesome people hosting the site, of course.
While I understand what you’re getting at, users can be viewed as “the product” if they are contributing content (posts, comments, votes, and other forms of engagement) and “the customer” if they are consuming this content in any way.
Without content or readers there would be no Lemmy, just like for Wikipedia with no editors or readers there would be no purpose for that site either. The terms “product” and “customer” aren’t intrinsically related to monetary value.
…I’m sorry, but blind positivism won’t get you, Lemmy and nothing else to anywhere. Nothing is perfect neither free of “predatory capitalism” – one day, you will “be the product”. And there is nothing you can do about it, because this world ain’t a fairy tale where we’ve got fairies flying around and giving us anything we want – we need money. And lots of it.
Shout at me, swarm at me with negative downvotes like it’s the best thing you can do (which probably is), but this is the real world, giving it to you with a couple words, fair and square.
What?
I see your point but there have been community-run message boards funded by donations in the past. I doubt Lemmy will replicate Reddit’s scale.
I think part of the beauty of the Fediverse is that nobody definitively holds any cards. Don’t like Lemmy.ml? Fine, setup Lemmy.world. Don’t like that one? There are other options! The ability for folks to interact with one another without having to generate new accounts is a major benefit. There are still some growing pains, but I think we’re on a pretty solid path.
My only concern is about excessive consolidation making de-federation more feasible and leading to high cost pressures (I know Lemmy.ca admin mentioned their costs and it was growing quite a bit). We have some folks looking at ways to address this and to possibly bring improvements to Lemmy code with respect to scalability. Fingers crossed!
Let’s make lemmy the best community in the world without corporate greed!
