With the recent moves from #Twitter, #Reddit, and even #Youtube, I think it’s becoming clear that ads are not a sustainable business model in the long run (and yes, I know I run a YouTube channel funded by ads 😅)
I took a look at a few examples, at how this decline is also making the web worse for everyone, at alternative platforms, and tried to imagine what an internet without ads to fund content creation and big platforms could look like:
-Channel, too 
:
I'm Nick, and I like to tinker with Linux stuff. I'll bumble through distro reviews, tutorials, and general helpful tidbits and impressions on Linux desktop environments, applications, and news. You might see a bit of Linux gaming here and there, and some more personal opinion pieces, but in the end, it's more or less all about Linux and FOSS ! If you want to stay up to snuff, follow me on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@thelinuxEXP If you can, consider supporting the channel here: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment
@thelinuxEXP
Of course the money made from the ads and views feeding the algorithm there really is an important income-factor as long as there is no better alternative (yet).
This will probably continue until the whole #degrowth and #GreenGrowth/#GreenReGrowth has been happening and our global #Economy has been "re-designed" - either voluntarily or by force of "circumstances". 
So, we'll see where all this is going and as long as you can deal with it morally, I think it's 👍 ❕
@thelinuxEXP
🤔 Not sure we'll still see it happening in our Lifetime ... or what this will mean for the Planet 
🧐
But, as the saying goes:
"#Hope is the last to die!" 
Random 2AM tought: I feel like eventually there's gonna be a day when most major #BigTech companies are going to suffer something super bad related to advertising or some shit like that and they're all gonna have financial issues and downtimes and all kinds of crazy stuff. Sounds pretty stupid when I type it out here because I suck at explaining things, but it just feels real and perfectly possible in my head.
@pH3ra Meta is losing tons of profit since privacy laws were voted, and since Apple basically blocked tracking in iOS apps. They’re still making money, but their business has taken a big dive!
I think they have a critical size that allows them to make it work, but for how long?
@thelinuxEXP I'd add conspiratorial organizations like anti-vaxx orgs would do well also, they don't raise their money on subscriptions or advertising.
Edit: Please don't misread me, the corporate run internet is a dumpster fire and does a bad job with those things as well. I'm not saying we are better off today, only that getting rid of them does not necessarily solve those problems.
@thelinuxEXP Well, the Youtube auto-ads that is 👀
I think there's something to be said about how people aren't necessarily against advertising (for better or worse). When it's intrusive and untargeted (with targeting necessarily meaning invasion of privacy) people aren't interested.
But running a sponsored segment in your video gives YOU directly more money (and not a dodgy revenue share scheme) and directly targets a product to an audience that'll be receptive to it.
@thelinuxEXP hey Nick, I liked the video but one big part you're leaving out is that these businesses are not just wanting to keep profitable. They have shareholders to appease, and they want everything to be more profitable year over year.
It's no longer a matter of having enough ads to keep the company afloat and make some revenue, nowadays it's a squeeze for maximum profit over everything else.
Both users and content creators are just a resource for them to exploit for as much profit as they can: content creators bring in the views, but they are as much cattle as the viewers.
@thelinuxEXP I think (hope?) that in the future the content creators will cut the middleman and start doing the distribution themselves so they will be dealing with advertisers/sponsors directly.
So in your case, you'd be getting "your own" Peertube and your revenue could come from insertions instead of pre-rolls, or "gated" content for subscribers.
I also hope that we will see an easy way for consumers to set a monthly budget and just split among all those creators that we want to support.
You mentioned Odysee (which I think is crap) but one project that I think could do this was Brave and their BAT token. With the Brave model, users get a share of the revenue from ads, and they could (theoretically) pay it forward to the content creators. Because the first revenue is in USD, the price of the token doesn't really matter.
@thelinuxEXP this is a really good video on the state of things! I’m definitely sharing it around. I know plenty of people who don’t understand ads pay for things on the “free” internet.
I really don’t mind paying for things in a subscription model for the stuff I rely on. Though I’ve come to find that some content creators want to charge A$10+ a month for their content, which I get but I can’t afford to do that for all my creators I follow the currently do it. It is hard to want to support people but also have (most) everyone asking for $10 or more a month.
@thelinuxEXP
It's pretty unfortunate that a lot of awesome creators will lose their jobs as a result of this. And that the web itself will turn crappy as a result.
That said, I also look forward to people finding a new revenue model. One that isn't privacy invasive or obtrusive. Maybe sponsorships will get more popular, maybe subscriptions will get more popular.
Hell maybe something entirely new may also come up.
@thelinuxEXP I called it a year ago
I love Internet, but the state of things on the Web is not very promising, to be honest: - people don't pay for stuff with money - there's no free lunch, stuff has to come from somewhere - software devs and service providers have to resort to ads to get money to keep the lights on - ad industry devours software and services alive Mozilla/Facebook deal is not THE disease, it's a symptom.
@AmonTheMetalHead They only seem to take on bigger channels, they denied me 3 times already 😂
Granted it was a while ago, and the channel had grown a lot since then.
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