@rysiek I enjoyed the comments.
"Now let’s say a band of idealists come together and decide to code up a social network. Without targeted advertising, how do you see them scale/survive?" 😂
"This is going to ruin start-ups and individuals hosting forums!" (GDPR has exemptions for these situations)
@bobstechsite also, "ruin startups"? OH NOES NOT THE STARTUPS!
I am strongly suspicious of anything that calls itself a "startup". From what I see startups' modus operandi is:
1. have an idea
2. release the simplest and most insecure version of it
3. get some users locked-in
4. get VC funding
5. get more users locked-in
6. sell to the first sucker that wants to pay
...thus shafting both the users (they're the product, duh) *and* the investors.
@rysiek @bobstechsite you can reduce it to - letting others pay the simplest development for someones idea to sell it making money for the rest of the live for the one who had the idea.
Main problem actually is, we are missing great projects, because they have not enough PR aso.
When trying to get something up without financial interest, ists nearly impossible to build up a team to start e.g. https://kmj.at/20180316-tssop-update_distributed_social_network_and_micro_blogging_project_open_source/
@kmj @bobstechsite I don't have a problem with financial interests and I recognize the need to get funding to put great ideas in production.
What I do have a problem with is a business model that relies not on long-term company building, but short-term scamming of users (of their data) and investors (of their money).
@kmj @bobstechsite let me be more specific about the users part: what is often sold with a startup is not a viable company making a profit, but a shell that contains users' private data. That's what the real product very often is when a startup is being sold.
And for the users, that's a bait-and-switch. Because now who knows where their data will end up? How it's going to be used?
@rysiek @bobstechsite let mecorect the financial part. for sure everybody must make money, but today the user is the product. A normal business would be somebody creates something cool and the user pays whatever for it. Using this income there should be no need to sell the users data. But actually most ideas accept that the user wants erverything for free and try to establish another business model. For sure far easier, then to convince the masses to pay for what they love/need/want.
@kmj @bobstechsite and we end up in the current privacy nightmare.
When was it decided, and by whom, that users won't pay if they are offered the choice?
Every time this argument pops up, I ask "where can I pay Google for the search service that does not abuse my private data? How can I pay Facebook for such a social network service?"
I can't. I am not offered that choice.
Fun fact, many Fediverse instances are user-supported.
@rysiek @bobstechsite this was the decision of some upcoming businesses in the past. Amazon startet with free shipping on books, most book dealers stopped their business, because they was not able to do that while still making profit. Customers/Users startet to only order with free shipping.
Then there was other social networks, some of them gone out of business too, but they destroyed most payed parts. E.g. Google killed all payed directory sitess aso....
User was told, intelligent uses free
@galaxis @rysiek @bobstechsite Here in Austria books had fixed prices too. They run this till people ordered masses of books online cheap/with free shipping. Normal book dealers was helpless, because sending books is expensive because of the weight
@rysiek @bobstechsite @kmj And Amazon "free shipping" was just using a loophole to offer discounts on books that otherwise had relatively (or, in Germany) absolutely fixed prices.