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.
I think we should avoid paywalls as much as possible and if any, only add cosmetic purchases.
Free awards are the ones ones spammed on random posts so if awards are added, they should be paid only.
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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.
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.
The hard truth is that long term, we likely need another way besides donations to keep the ecosystem alive.
Letting users decide where the money goes to is much better yeah.
I think they should be able to set percentages. See here: https://lemmy.world/comment/1068820
Honestly I think awards are a decent way of determining the quality of a post. If a Reddit post has a lot of awards it’s a sign that it is especially helpful/interesting. I know there are exceptions and sometimes the flood of awards at the top of the post is annoying, but often it works for determining the quality.
So people will aim to make posts of similar quality to get awards as well.
Karma on the other hand is too easy to get so its leads to shitty reposts to get a lot of likes. But the people don’t give awards to reposts that often.
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.
I agree with @tigr@lemmy.world : Giving the user the power to decide where the money goes to is the best option. This eliminates the need for a centralised account with a system to spread the money, which would definitely lead to a lot of arguments.
The user could select something like 20% lemmy devs, 30% instance of community, 50% instance their created the account on. This way the user can decide who gets their “donation”
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
Im so glad we didn’t loose the humor in the migration !
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?