super necessary if we expect anyone (outside of hobbyists) to even think of putting their content on the fediverse first or at the same time as other platforms
this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2025
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It‘s a two sided blade, but I get what you mean.
On one hand monetization is the thing that ruins platforms for me because it invites grifters and even decent people are becoming obsessed with numbers. Most people see content creation only as a career path and not something to do for fun anymore. I find that depressing at times.
On the other hand we currently live in a capitalist world and have to play by those rules to some extend. I learned most of the things I do for a living from Youtube because professionals do Blender tutorials as a side gig or even for a living. There probably wouldn‘t be nearly as much knowledge out there without this motivator. Or at least not in this form that is easy to understand for me. The official Blender documentation usually isn‘t the first place I‘m searching through when I have a problem.
So I see where you‘re coming from but it‘s a fine line between helpful and loathsome.
What if there was a federated platform for supporting the channels you like? Maybe something like Patreon? Or how about some sort of merch store for people who can sell the things they make?
Maybe something like Patreon
Well we do have Liberapay. It's not perfect in that it only addresses the payment angle (with the issue around processors noted by the other reply still present), and doesn't allow for subscriber only content, but it's something.
I think between something like this and a few other things (dunno much about PeerTube etc. or if 'private' posts are a thing where you could maintain a 'mailing list' of donor accounts and grant them access to exclusive stuff), it's possible to cobble something together. Lot of management would be required in the backend compared to more mainstream approaches at this point, though.
Just thinking outloud, there's probably stuff I'm not considering here. Re: an eStore...idk, only thing I can think of is a DIY webstore relying on emails and money transfer services if trying to avoid mainstream eCommerce stuff like Shopify or whatever (same way people used to sell pot on the clearweb back in the very early days, lol).
You would still need a payment processor, which takes a huge chunk of the cake in fees.
Client side support for a tipping link (Koffee, Patreon, crypto wallet, whatever the user's choice is) that is built in to the UI would go a long way.
Like what peertube has?
Nice, I dont use Peertube as often as I'd like because I haven't found the right creators for me. Good to know they already have this, should be an example to the rest of the platforms
PeerTube's support button is, at best, a lightbox that holds a text string. It's fine for highlighting links, but you still kind of have to dance around with having an account in another system to make the payment.
I have high hopes for GNU Taler in that regard, as it is in theory super easy to include in any website and makes tipping small sums very feasible.
But in reality it is bogged down by bureocractic hurdles on the banking side, and I am starting to lose a bit of hope due to perpetual delays even after some banks promised to support it as part of an EU grant via Nlnet.
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Patreon kinda fits that, but I'm not sure about their open-sourceness
OpenCollective is a pretty solid open source contender in my experience. It's not perfect, but it's definitely workable.
Keep it away is my strong advice. Having to deal with banks will mean having to deal with regulations. Having to deal with crypto means having to deal with crytpo bros. Having to deal with paywalls is a barrier to entry
The internet was a better place without money touching everything!
I don't have strong feelings either way, but money does touch everything, overtly or not, when it comes to civilisation. Time spent volunteering on Fediverse projects is effectively money spent (at least to some degree), and instances cost time & fees to maintain.
But I guess to argue against myself-- you have to think that without some kind of ongoing responsible oversight, then the worst aspects of capitalism might predictably find a way to screw it all up if left to its own devices. Then again, maybe the scale involved makes that less likely. *shrug*
Yeah, I get it. Volunteers' time should be valued. But, there is more to valuing than money is my counter: authority, respect, community engagement, and a fraternal/paternal element
I salute all mods. And I pay for admins
I mean, you're kind of lifting my point in to a broader area that I wasn't speaking to at the time.
Of course I agree with all that you said. But I was talking strictly in the context of OP's framework.
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Really happy to see this discussion here. Here is no "correct" path here, but is deeply important that the one we choose is intentional and thoughtfully considered by the folks these platforms serve
Both their audience and their contributors.
Maybe it's just nostalgia but in my opinion, with youtube it went all to shit the moment the money started to be involved. Algorithm chasing, advertisement, reactive content, sponsors, quickly generated videos, ... and all the other shit.
So if monetization, then let's try to avoid same mistakes
I'm not sure if this translates to the content creators. There's many of them whom I really like to watch who do (or did) Youtube as a business model. Tom Scott being one example or Derek Muller (Veritasium). I'm subscribed to many more. Simplicissimus and their yet better second channel (in German). We wouldn't have those without monetization. The platform of course went shit over time. Fortunately my Ad blocker still works and thanks to Sponsorblock my experience is fairly alright... But personally - I'm split on this question. We had quite the amount of entertainment before monetization but I think a large amount of quality content also arrived after that, and because of it. Those people would be working some office job today if it wasn't to Youtube. And I (and the world) would miss out.... On the other hand we got MrBeast, a lot of fake cooking videos...
One seemingly enormous difference is that YT is a for-profit platform owned by a huge business (Google), not a decentralised network run by many small volunteers. FWIW.
I don't think it was money that changed youtube, i think it was the algo, it now promotes viral content that for some reason has a persons face in the thumbnail with an exaggerated face :O
Yeah, the YouTube algorithm itself is a huge problem. I think about the fact that there are entire slop studios out there trying to ride algorithm trends, churning out crap to push onto YouTube Kids so that they'll do numbers and make a lot of money from it.
Like, I have nothing against the concept of a recommendation algorithm itself, but the relationship I just described is nightmare fuel.
A free and direct tip system that doesn't force you to use credit cards would be quite useful
I tried to use a gift certificate to donate to dbzer0 last night. It didn't work because of a zip code field. I just want to look at cat pictures and make a snarky comment every so often without a facist paramilitary kicking in my front door. Fuck me, right?
If you're going to spend money at all then you'll just have to give some of it (or all of it) to a totally overpowered construct of evil. If you don't then they might start to lose power, and boy howdy they just can not have that happen. Oh, and make sure you continue to distrust your fellow man because if you all start working together you might decide that things should change.
Hey, um .... I read your article. Or I tried to.
It lost me at the point where I need to give money to somebody else. So, basically right at the start.
To be more specific, your article starts of lamenting that its not convenient enough for me to give money to someone ("content creators", a bullshit term if I've ever heard one) on these federated platforms. "this is a bit of a problem" There's no examination of whether we should be doing this. Its taken as a given that monetization is a positive goal.
So ... I really tried to get there and understand your point, but there's this vast gulf between us.
Why would it be bad if nobody makes any money off the fediverse?
That sounds good to me.
I don't agree, really ... that'd limit the Fediverse to hobbyists.
It's completely legitimate to look for income & exposure as a creator, whether you're making music, visual art, or document your process making physical objects. Corporate platforms, as crappy as they might be, provide a path to that, and in many ways created viable path for creators to do what they like full-time. Not saying that it's perfect or easy. But the Fediverse is currently no alternative at all ...
Currently, restricting yourself to the Fediverse as an artist unfortunately means that you're taking quite a hit in terms of exposure you can get. As long as that's the case, and people even defend it, then we really can't complain that the Fediverse isn't attractive for a larger amount of people, and centralized platforms will always have the bigger draw.
I try to avoid corporate platforms as much as I can, but as a consumer I often feel starved of content. I haven't found any interesting woodworking channels on PeerTube, or guitar repair channels, or whatever else I enjoy watching to wind down.
And as a creator, well ... it's not my source of income, but I sure would like it to be. And if I ever decide to make that step, I'm pretty sure that I's have to make amends to my "no corporate platforms" approach. The Fediverse doesn't feed you.
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What's bullshit about content creators? I enjoy watching documentaries from The History Channel or The Learning Channel. If someone does a bunch of research and self-publishes a documentary, they're somehow less valid?
The article isn't about anybody "making money off the fediverse". It's about finding a way to make the fediverse viable, considering that everybody wants to use it, but nobody wants to donate.
Youtube was a lot more fun before it was flooded with professionals out to make a buck on advertising. This thing you seek ... it is not good.
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Not OP, but I'd work real fucking hard to give us something that can be a viable alternative to Youtube where a corporate monopoly doesn't take 95% of the cash. It doesn't even need to be federated, but we all see the shithole Odysee immediately became. We have a substantial number of people here with like interests and marginally like feelings on a lot of topics that would make great video content.
Peertube has been around for 7 years, and there isn't enough content on it to occupy even a Linux nerd for more than 30 minutes a week. People are only making videos on YouTube because they can make some semblance of a living at it.
I think giving people who are willing to create videos some decent tools for monetization in open products would be a reasonably good idea. We have nothing there now; we don't have anything to lose by it. It's not like great content that doesn't exist can be walled off to us.
This could be as easy as forking peertube and putting in patreon privitization links. Or it could be a federated version of KoFi that ties in.
Ok, I quibble with much of what you just wrote, but your first line contained a lucid point.
In essence, you propose that a federated monetization scheme would direct the bulk of the pie to the participants and not to the big corporate interests.
Now that's a damned interesting thing to consider.
I think its obvious that it would/will go awry. Any time you get non-profits screwing around with money, somebody figures out how to steal it.
But if even a bit more went to the participants and paid for infrastructure, that would be a positive thing.
But again ... non-profits and coops never handle money correctly. Watch this get all the way to the goalpost and then swoop, it all gets handled with GooglePay. Its doomed. DOOM.
I think its obvious that it would/will go awry.
I'm not even sure that is possible, but I'd like to see us try something.
Maybe the best place to start is by allowing a microtransaction service into the UI and let people add their own API keys to known players.
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Artists need exposure before monetization imho, which currently fedi lacks severely. So discoverability is what I suggest as priority to work on.
That said, algorithm free is the draw of fedi as well and I personally don't want my feed filled with excessive ad or self promo spam. Getting the right middle ground will be tricky.
Where do you think would be an affordable place to advertise the fediverse?
I think the fediverse should advertise it's self in a simple slogan that can lead the normal user into a more in depth explanation of what, why and how. When I first discovered Lemmy, I didn't know what the fediverse was, it felt really strange
After seeing your post on akkoma, I think I understand your point even better.
I want to support artists and would definitely buy music on fedi. I would rather just watch hobbyist make videos for peertube and especially for loops.
But if it means that it would help the platform stay afloat I am way more open to the idea of monetization beyond just donations.
Thanks for bringing it up. Nobody likes to talk about money in the Fediverse, but it's a fact of life.
I've stopped making Peertube videos lately mainly because I got tired of donating. We've got to come up with a better solution.
Money being considered to be a “fact of life“ is the sad part here. It’s not a natural system that just is and we cannot change. That doesn’t mean I disagree with you. I‘d be upset not getting a paycheck at the end of this month and rely on money like everyone else because we live in this late stage capitalist hell. But I refuse to accept any monetary system as a natural given, that’s probably all i‘m trying to say.
If Fediverse software starts encouraging monetization, I don't think the userbase will even maintain the current strength.
If you allow artists to display their work in various communities along with the ability to post links in their profiles, but you restrict actual posts to disallow self-promotion, it's the best of both worlds, IMO.
In other words, if you can't include self-promotion in your community posts, but everyone knows you have the links in your profile, it attracts less grifters and keeps the feed clean, while allowing anyone interested to contact a poster directly or ask them promotional questions via DMs.
That said, hosting a full-fledged marketplace is not a good idea, IMO. There are laws and banks involved, which mean lawyers and taxes, and volunteer management does not work for that. There are already marketplaces that do that well, and allowing artists to post their own links of choice in their profiles will let them steer actual business to other platforms, while keeping the fediverse for display, review, share and critique. My opinion, anyway.
Part of the headache here is that this situation inherently props up a few monopolistic platforms, rather than allowing people to use whatever payment system is available in their own countries. Some of this can be worked around using cryptocurrencies – famously, the Mitra project leverages Monero for this very purpose, although I'm told it now can accept other forms of payment as well.
Hell yeah, I didn't know about Mitra. It sounds like it's a Patreon esque kind of deal with what the payments part is for.
Silverpill might not like me making this comparison, but its form and function are shockingly similar to OnlyFans.
Sounds like an additional reason to be doing it in a way where participants can't be debanked by payments middlemen
Where'd my other comment go? Editorial censorship takes this from "a really bad idea" to a super fucked up attempt at poisoning this beautiful place with the worship of wealth
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