Fact is, the Lemmy ecosystem needs money to handle the growing server reqirements as more people migrate as well as the development cost of new features (I know Lemmy is OSS but the devs should still get some compensation for their effort).

Seeing how much some reddit users love awards so much that they cant stop giving money to Reddit to award posts protesting the api change, this could be a great way for users to voluntary support the ecosystem. It can be easily ignored by users not caring about them (clients could even add an option to hide them), but users liking the feature can go wild and this time the money goes to volunteers keeping this alive instead of greedy admins, power mods and investors.

Though there would be some big organization questions attached: attached:

  • Which server handles the payment? A centralized one, the one where the post was made or the one where the user giving the award account was created.
  • How will the money be shared between the Devs and the individual instances in a way that is fair but cant be abused easily.
  • justhach@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    1 year ago

    Can we leave the karma system and awards with Reddit? Allowing voting in comment sections for pseudo-moderation by the users is good, but when it turns into a scoring system the conversation devolves into a competition to see who can craft the most palatable opinion to get the most imaginary internet points.

    Despite all my thoughtful and helpful comments I made in my 11 years on reddit, you know what my top comment was?

    • Comes in
    • Kills the Queen
    • Tanks the economy
    • Leaves

    What a legacy.

    47k updoots, and 27 awards.

  • murphys_lawyer@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Could we like, not immediately talk about monetisation 1 month after leaving reddit? If you want to support your instance host, you can ask for a way to donate.

    • lesnake@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      6
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      The hard truth is that long term, we likely need another way besides donations to keep the ecosystem alive.

        • magic_lobster_party@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          Donations seem to work fine for Wikipedia as well. Same with internet archive. We should not underestimate the willingness of people to support a good cause.

        • Spaceman Spiff@lemmy.fmhy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          This really needs to be higher.

          Running a Mastodon or Lemmy server is surprisingly cheap. With some specific tweaks and rules (esp. hosting images and video elsewhere), it can get even cheaper.

          If your only goal is to break even, then it’s amazingly easy. Roughly 1 of every 20 users contributing $1/month. Adjust the numbers as you see fit.

          Or a single, non-datamined ad at the top of the page.

        • lesnake@lemmy.worldOP
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Looks like donations work surprisingly well with the current userbase and current expenses. The projects on opencolective are doing quite well.

          Lets just hope this stays that way for a while.

          I doubt its sustainable that way forever though if more reddit users and subreddits migrate. So if donations arent enough anymore in the future, I hope they choose something like awards instead of flooding the site with ads, analytics or paywals.

          • static@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            So when scaling up

            You expect that : costs per user rise and donations per user drop?

            I expect that: costs per user drop, donations per user stay the same, and external subsidies rise.

            • lesnake@lemmy.worldOP
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              Basically yes, but I also assume the cost per users drops/stays the same

              I think the next ppl joining are mostly teens who dont consider donating,but would consider occasionally buying something like awards

              I doubt external subsidies can cover the missing donations.

              Edit: Also I assume ppl in their early 20s are more likely to buy awards than donate.

              • static@kbin.social
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                And even then there could be donated vs award servers.
                I prefer to focus on the donated ones.

                It was a bit mean/dishonest from me to frame costs for you.
                my guess of dounations just does not match yours.

                • lesnake@lemmy.worldOP
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  I assume you that awards are optional for each server.

                  How would you determine if awards are enabled? The server of the community or the server where the account was created?

      • Spzi@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        Or maybe some people just can’t imagine how this could work without being centered around money.

        Lemmy has been around for years. New instances are popping up as new users come in. So far, I haven’t seen an instance suffering from lack of funds, but others being funded for months ahead, some even donating excess funds to Lemmy devs.

        All while topics like these pop up every other day. For me, it looks like catastrophization. Seeking solutions for problems which do not exist (yet? Not even sure about that).

        • lesnake@lemmy.worldOP
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          I dont expect a decentralised platform to be profitable and also think donations are better than in-app purchases.

          But I dont want big instances to suddenly turn off because they cant afford it anymore or the development being behind so much we loose users to missing features.

          Looking at the donation pages of lemmy instances there are enough donations for now but it is good to have a plan B for in case we get flooded by users not willing to donate so this platform survives long term. That plan B should be as least Invasive as possible,so no ads,analytics or paywall. Thats why I suggested something that is completely cosmetic.

          • ANGRY_MAPLE@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            I think a good start before all of that would be for struggling instances to tell their user base that they are struggling.

            Not going to lie, awards like that would probably make me start looking for another new platform again. I don’t want that part of reddit, personally. I want comments that are there to be there, not comments that are only there to get the most positive feedback. For me, doing this would take lemmy further away from being an open forum, and move it closer towards being a lame popularity contest. I can only see the same jokes so many times.

  • jacktherippah@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    1 year ago

    I don’t want to see award speeches here on Lemmy. For example: OMG! THANK YOU FOR THE GOLD KIND STRANGER!!!1111

  • Nima@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    1 year ago

    Please no rewards. This is not reddit. I think a donation system would be much better way to go about it.

    Let the content and conversations just happen. It’s more organic that way.

  • mrmanager@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    The growing server requirements…

    I think like 99% of people picked accounts on the top 10 servers, and there are hundreds of more servers out there that have only a few users. Why do you all flock to the same server (Lemmy.world in particular) and then go “shit this is getting expensive guys”. :)

    Fediverse. Federated. Not Centralized. Not Reddit.

    This technology supports speeding out, so many people (instance admins) share the costs.

    • captain_samuel_brady@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      And the cost of storage? I get that the load is balanced, in a sense, but it still seems as though there will be significant costs if each server is going to keep all the posts that have been federated to. And the traffic itself just to remain in sync could also be fairly dramatic if we get to the size of Reddit. Unless I’m missing something about the technology, which could very well be true.

  • skogens_ro@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    1 year ago

    this

    Edit: thank you for the gold, kind dear gentlesir or gentlemadame.

    Edit2: wow I never expected to wake up to so many awards, who’d knew my most updooted comment would be about this?

  • Alula@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    1 year ago

    I don’t believe that awards should exist on comments or posts, but i do want the devs to gain some money off of this.

    The best choice would probably be for them to set up ways to donate to them in my opinion .

    • warmaster@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      The thing is, nobody donates. But they love their lucky charms. It’s just a dark pattern.

    • IDatedSuccubi@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      I used them a couple of times, I like them; I use them when the post I REALLY like doesn’t have much upvotes. Like when I see post with 24 upvotes that deserves 400+ I give it gold, so the user will still feel happy.

      Disclaimer though, I received all my points from winning a big sub contest, I didn’t ever pay for them.

  • BrikoX@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    1 year ago

    I think it’s a distraction from the actual interactions. Same way karma is.

    I’m all for supporting instances and open source developers, but any kind of reward for a donation creates wrong incentives. Donation is called a donation because it’s a gift without expecting something in return.

    • Ulu-Mulu-no-die@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      I fully agree with you, karma “whoring” is a serious problem on reddit, awards could lead to the same behavior here if implemented.

      Donations are the best way to support the platform, if you want to be “visible” as donator, opencollective allows you to post a message about it, there’s also a sort of top donators page, that’s more than enough in my opinion.

    • lesnake@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      I can understand the mindset, but I worry most people don’t think like this.

      The thing is, that small rewards for “donations” will likely make the people much more willing to spend money in the first place. Even if it’s as small as a sticker on someone else’s post that costs the servers involved like a handful of API calls. But when a 1€ award is 3x as popular as the 1€ donation, it will greatly increase the funds available to the instance and, hence better servers, more features etc

      • lesnake@lemmy.worldOP
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        There is a reason many YouTubers sell discord roles. Many people are willing to spend 5€/month for a stupid discord rank, so I don’t see why it’s wrong to profit of people willing to buy awards

        If you prefer direct donation, having something like awards won’t stop you but if someone wants to buy that overpriced sticker, they can as well.

  • Marxine@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    1 year ago

    I pass. Gamifying social interactions leads to abuse and lowers the quality of posts, comments, reports, etc. It’s a streamlined path to enshittification.

    Only user-provided 🏅🐭 awards here, at most.

    • oxf@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      Even “user-provided awards” should be kept out. It provides nothing substantial to the conversation.

      It’s like saying “This 👆”, “I agree”, or “Take my upvote!”, all of which can be expressed by simply voting on the comment, which actually has an impact.

      • Marxine@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Fully agreed. That’s why I said “at most” because that’s the worst I’d tolerate, but I still think upvoting is already enough.

  • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I don’t love the awards from Reddit, but I would like to see something like this (unpopular opinion, I know). Instances need funding.

    I don’t care about what the awards are themselves, I care about the way the funding works. I would love to see the funds split in a two tiered system.

    Here is a general example of my idea. When a award is purchased it gets split into two pots. One pot is a general pot that gets disbursed to those running the instances based on whatever metrics and intervals agreed upon. The other part gets assigned to the reward itself. So in this example let’s say an award costs one dollar. 90 cents would go to the pool to be split, the other 10 cents would be tied to the award. So if you award a post on an instance it goes specifically to that instance itself. Instances could even set a percent split with community moderators of the 10 cents. That way you could fund moderators (if that ever becomes needed)

    You could even split part of the award reward with the commentor assigned to it… but that puts a weird feeling in my gut and I feel like it is a bad idea to monetize the content itself.

    There is a lot you could do with this and a lot more would need to be fleshed out, so I am just thinking out loud.

  • andisent@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    I never cared for them on Reddit and used third party tools to remove or hide them.

    I don’t like that they can be used to shop visibility.

    I would like that it gives an opportunity to fund instances but I would hope we could discover another way to do this.