For many years, even Tiktok’s critics grudgingly admitted that no matter how surveillant and creepy it was, it was really good at guessing what you wanted to see.
I never could get into Tiktok, but this is definitely true. It’s interesting to see that even communist-bound companies are still companies at the end of the day and will eventually go through the process the opinion post describes.
What I wonder now is if these federated communities are immune to this. For example, can I host an instance that publishes ads to subscribers feeds once I reach a critical mass of users? I would imagine, as the admin of this hypothetical instance, I could. So this “ensh*tification” process could happen even here. (I doubt it will though… for a while at least)
What I wonder now is if these federated communities are immune to this. For example, can I host an instance that publishes ads to subscribers feeds once I reach a critical mass of users?
Yes, this is a thing an instance admin can do, though some Fediverse platforms make it harder than others. A very large chunk of the Fediverse is then going to defederate with that instance because they hate that shit. So in this regard, there is at least some counterplay in that users still have a decent amount of control over their own destiny. If one big instance goes to shit, the other instances can still maintain their standards and aren’t forced to abandon the platform if they don’t like the trajectory of one particular instance. Users of the big instance who don’t like said instance’s approach also have the option to migrate to other instances, so they’re not held hostage.
If the discussions I see on Mastodon are anything to go by, then the moment people find out that your hypothetical future instance shows ads to its users, they will embargo you by blocking all communication with it.
And hiding that would be impossible: since Lemmy uses the AGPL license for its source code, when you add the advertisement code to it, you’ll legally have to publish the changed source code, at which point people will be able to find out what exactly you did to it.
P.S.: also, the possibility of doing that (or even just collecting and selling data) is exactly why a lot of fediverse users distrust large instances like mastodon.social, to the point that these also get preemptively blocked (though also that one specifically is said to inadequately moderate the posts people put out, as the spam-bot incident has shown, so there’s more than one reason to do so)
I never could get into Tiktok, but this is definitely true. It’s interesting to see that even communist-bound companies are still companies at the end of the day and will eventually go through the process the opinion post describes.
What I wonder now is if these federated communities are immune to this. For example, can I host an instance that publishes ads to subscribers feeds once I reach a critical mass of users? I would imagine, as the admin of this hypothetical instance, I could. So this “ensh*tification” process could happen even here. (I doubt it will though… for a while at least)
Yes, this is a thing an instance admin can do, though some Fediverse platforms make it harder than others. A very large chunk of the Fediverse is then going to defederate with that instance because they hate that shit. So in this regard, there is at least some counterplay in that users still have a decent amount of control over their own destiny. If one big instance goes to shit, the other instances can still maintain their standards and aren’t forced to abandon the platform if they don’t like the trajectory of one particular instance. Users of the big instance who don’t like said instance’s approach also have the option to migrate to other instances, so they’re not held hostage.
If the discussions I see on Mastodon are anything to go by, then the moment people find out that your hypothetical future instance shows ads to its users, they will embargo you by blocking all communication with it.
And hiding that would be impossible: since Lemmy uses the AGPL license for its source code, when you add the advertisement code to it, you’ll legally have to publish the changed source code, at which point people will be able to find out what exactly you did to it.
P.S.: also, the possibility of doing that (or even just collecting and selling data) is exactly why a lot of fediverse users distrust large instances like
mastodon.social, to the point that these also get preemptively blocked (though also that one specifically is said to inadequately moderate the posts people put out, as the spam-bot incident has shown, so there’s more than one reason to do so)