39
lemmy users, how would we fund big tech alternatives, if targeted ads cannot be a thing? (thelemmy.club)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
33 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

i don't defend targeted ads since they are bad (i use uBlock)

but what monetization system is a bit more ethical than targeted ads but can last unlike donations

how would you solve that issue

My Opinionwell it is make that there are version which you own but if you pay for 1 the one after it you pay again for that new version but with a small discount

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 12 points 1 week ago (3 children)

The code might be open source, but the infrastructure it runs on needs to be paid for somehow

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    Yep. I took OP's question to be about big tech. If business isn't using it, you can't get too big.

    Look at MS and all the people around here predicting their downfall because they personally switched to Linux and the Xbox division is suffering. Y'all, 85-90% of Microsoft's profits are corporate Windows and Office. The rest is fluff. LOL, they long ago dropped resistance to pirating and I've paid them zero pennies over 30-years of using Windows for personal use.

    On infra though, we sysadmins had predicted another wave of business bringing compute and storage back inhouse. Despite the stunning charges from AWS and the like, that doesn't look to ever happen. Wierd.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 1 point 6 days ago

    An individual switching is certainly ineffective, but if the switch affects other people in their household, especially children, then they will grow up knowing that there's a better alternative out there and potentially bring that to their workplace, especially in smaller companies. And it doesn't have to be a complete replacement at the workplace to start with either; it could be the adoption of a standard that doesn't require the use of big tech products, where people can use open products that support the open format.

    This line of thinking is why big tech has a strong interest in putting their products into schools, as it shapes the expectations of schoolchildren of what tools are available.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 4 points 1 week ago

    Yeah, subscriptions and donations would have to be more than what is now. But distributed and federated systems and not chasing profitability at corporations would go a long way to running systems. Lemmy for example can be an alternative to Reddit while running off of hobbyist and donarion run servers. Gmail probably costs a fortune but what about 100,000 small independent email servers taking its place? Email is already a federated system. And then there's self hosting. I bought a second hand computer and run the equivalent of Google Photos for myself and others on it for very cheap. Putting all these together, and if these were the default and more supported, the infrastructure costs can be spread thin.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent