this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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You Should Know

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Why YSK: Getting along in a new social environment is easier if you understand the role you've been invited into.


It has been said that "if you're not paying for the service, you're not the customer, you're the product."

It has also been said that "the customer is always right".

Right here and now, you're neither the customer nor the product.

You're a person interacting with a website, alongside a lot of other people.

You're using a service that you aren't being charged for; but that service isn't part of a scheme to profit off of your creativity or interests, either. Rather, you're participating in a social activity, hosted by a group of awesome people.

You've probably interacted with other nonprofit Internet services in the past. Wikipedia is a standard example: it's one of the most popular websites in the world, but it's not operated for profit: the servers are paid-for by a US nonprofit corporation that takes donations, and almost all of the actual work is volunteer. You might have noticed that Wikipedia consistently puts out high-quality information about all sorts of things. It has community drama and disputes, but those problems don't imperil the service itself.

The folks who run public Lemmy instances have invited us to use their stuff. They're not business people trying to make a profit off of your activity, but they're also not business people trying to sell you a thing. This is, so far, a volunteer effort: lots of people pulling together to make this thing happen.

Treat them well. Treat the service well. Do awesome things.

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[–] FartSmarter@lemmy.world 331 points 1 year ago (17 children)

People should also remember that it costs money for these servers to exist. So if you enjoy using it, try to support the service by donating to your instance, contributing to open source projects, spreading the gospel, etc.

[–] lunarshot@lemmy.world 68 points 1 year ago (17 children)

Couldn’t agree more, we need to continue to attract the kind of people who would really be able to help grow this kind of community, so if you have friends you think would like this, try talking to them.

Drop a couple bucks into support the admins and servers - think about streaming services you pay for and use less. $5-10/month to donate to a service you are using daily is pretty cheap considering.

[–] jennwiththesea@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago

I see a lot of people willing to support the servers, but little conversation on how to support the admins. I support a living (and competitive) wage for folks, and don't think instance admins should be doing this work for free. If you set up your own tiny instance for your family, sure, I bet you won't be charging your family for it, but a huge instance with constant needs and a bunch of strangers is a totally different thing. Just donating toward server costs does not allow admins to pay their personal bills, while they put in hours of work to keep this place going. So, I appreciate you for including "admins" in the support needs!

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[–] SomeoneElse@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I’m dirt poor but I’ve donated to Wikipedia at least three times now. I use that website so often, it’s changed my life.

[–] tooting_lemmy@lemm.ee 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I gave them some money after I graduated college. I had used them so much it felt right to give back a bit.

[–] Quill7513@slrpnk.net 17 points 1 year ago

They're not a perfect org bit they're very much an org I'd prefer to continue to exist

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[–] average650@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Beehaw has a periodic financial update. It would be great if each instance had a similar kind of update so that we can understand what is needed and where to help.

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[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 88 points 1 year ago (4 children)

This post missed the most important part people should know: someone is footing the bill for you to use this service. If you're not paying, they will make their money in whatever what they choose. Potential resulting in you becoming the product. Yes, even on lemmy. So if your instance mod needs funding, kick em a few bucks, be their customer.

[–] overzeetop@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

kick em a few bucks, be their customer.

Better yet, be their partner.

[–] Hopps@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

That's a bit much, I'm not looking to get into a relationship here. /s

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[–] orientalsniper@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is important to note, we're not the customers nor the product for now.

Instances need to be sustainable as to not look for other potential types of funding.

[–] SkyNTP@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's time for social media where you are the customer. That's what I would like, and I am willing to pay for it if the costs are reasonable. I thing that starts with public accounting. Like a condo association. I think some instances have started doing this.

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[–] Dazza@lemmy.world 83 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

One of my favourite things about early days Reddit was it’s growing community of positivity. There was actual encouragement to be nice to each other and subreddits were built around celebrating stuff.

Negativity was downvoted into oblivion so you never saw that stuff on the All page and popular pages.

I’m seeing the same thing with Lemmy right now and hope it continues long into the future. The lack of profiteering should really help with this.

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[–] NewBrainWhoThis@lemmy.world 42 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Lets see what the future brings. As long as the user count is low there isn't much of a problem, but if instances suddenly have millions of users, it will get expensive for admins to run the service. If too few people donate (what is usually the case), admins are forced to search for other ways to finance the infrastructure. The other point is AI, wheter you like it or not, if Lemmy is big enough, the content (conversations etc.) will be used to train LLMs. Also, the content will certainly be interesting for advertisers to learn user preferences. The difficulty comes with scale.

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[–] AnObscureTenet@lemmy.world 42 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Nope. You're the USER. A concept that is as old as computing and yet has gone completely by the wayside recently with the corporate monopolization of the internet.

Good to see it making a comeback.

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[–] quazar@lemmy.world 39 points 1 year ago (9 children)

To quote the first words of the old Dune movie:

"A beginning is a very delicate time."

What we should all take responsibility for is the health and quality of the community. We should be more active citizens, instead of the passive "consumers" we've all been corporately groomed to be.

I think more instances are the answer because this activity can't be cheap. maybe Lemmy.world splits off into 2 or 4 instances. Lemmy1.world etc

This dynamic will have to stabilize in costs. I don't know what that looks like.

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[–] Ataraxia@lemmy.world 37 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It's like hanging out at a friend's house. Follow their rules.

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[–] mx3m@lemmy.world 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

“If you’re not paying for the service, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.”

I see this everywhere, it’s the logical fallacy equivalent of “everything that’s rare has value”.

I’m sure most people, on the top of their head, can think of at least 3 products that are free to use and aren’t engineered to leverage their private information (Wikipedia anyone?)

What is true though, is that if you’re not paying for the product or service, SOMEBODY ELSE definitely is. So the question is: “who is paying for me? And why are they paying for me? What is at stake for them?”

[–] lorcster123@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

I've donated to wikipedia before because I feel its valuable to me for all the information it gives.

I might donate to lemmy if i feel its valuable to me for information or discussions

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[–] AeonFelis@lemmy.world 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is open source. We are neither products nor customers - we are all test subjects.

[–] GingerKun@vlemmy.net 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's a little reductive... Lemmy Admins are users as well. And any bug reports or feedback you provide is implemented to improve Lemmy, which we all benefit from.

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[–] magnetosphere@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago

Mostly what I feel is gratitude. Personally, I don’t have the skills, technical knowledge, or free time required to run even a small instance. I know I’m relying on the generosity of others, which makes me much more tolerant of delays, glitches, etc.

[–] Yasuke@lemmy.fmhy.ml 24 points 1 year ago

And that’s where I’m just loving it. All dope apps and services without a single person being greedy. I still haven’t seen a dev ask for money for any apps and the crazy part is I would pay for Memmy in a heart beat.

[–] Jerosh@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago

It truly does remind me of the wide-spread forum days, but with the bells and whistles that comes from connectivity across the board.

[–] rdyoung@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The second quote often leaves out the rest of it.

The full original quote was.

The customer is always right in matters of taste. Notice how that means something completely different than the quote everyone uses?

That is all I have to add.

[–] Quill7513@slrpnk.net 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So many boomers think "the customer is always right" means the service provider is required to give you white glove treatment when the real meaning is that the service provider is not allowed to tell the customer theyre wrong to like plaid and paisley together

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[–] DrMango@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

While I understand what you're getting at, users can be viewed as "the product" if they are contributing content (posts, comments, votes, and other forms of engagement) and "the customer" if they are consuming this content in any way.

Without content or readers there would be no Lemmy, just like for Wikipedia with no editors or readers there would be no purpose for that site either. The terms "product" and "customer" aren't intrinsically related to monetary value.

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[–] adamantris@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

While we're at it, big thanks to the instance owners :) I'm donating an Euro a month, it's not a lot but at least something

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 17 points 1 year ago (6 children)

It has also been said that “the customer is always right”.

If i'm not mistaken, the original saying was more along the lines of "The customer should always feel he's right". Anyway, the gist is that any side is "always right" should never be the mindset of any sane business or service.

Not entirely related to the topic, but something that I think everyone shold be aware of

[–] mosiacmango@lemm.ee 28 points 1 year ago

The old saying is that "the customer is always right in matters of taste."

If you just love making green widgets but your customers buy blue ones 10x more than green, you should make blue widgets, not green ones.

I think its better summed up as "sell what sells."

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[–] trouser_mouse@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Particularly in these early stages, really clear and transparent communication and plans are key I think.

Nice to see some info on the sidebar links, hopefully will be combined with posts and further info as things progress.

Help people buy into supporting the service they use, but knowing who they are supporting, why, and what their support via Patreon enables.

I think a lot of people would be happy to pay small amounts, but what are the running costs, and what is the roadmap and requirements and cost to scale and improve performance etc. What happens to additional funds over and above the running costs? (Fair compensation for time should be a thing!)

Another consideration is aside from the financial side, what other support will be required to scale and what are plans for that - additional admins, any other mods for "official" communities etc.

It's a very exciting time, delicate but full of potential!

[–] Shippuu@lemm.ee 17 points 1 year ago

Let’s make lemmy the best community in the world without corporate greed!

[–] Ephrite@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)
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[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (8 children)

I’m actually paying monthly to help with server costs. What am I?

[–] Mogofwin@lemm.ee 25 points 1 year ago

A person who chipped in $5 for a pizza party.

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[–] fenwickrysen@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

People always forget the last part of the quote: "The customer is always right in matters of taste."

;-)

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[–] SGG@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

While I agree and love the idea, it's going to be very difficult to keep things this way. Main two reasons are:

  • It costs money to run a service like this as it expands.
  • The temptation of the money to be gained from gathering data can be very hard to resist.

I'm honestly fully ready to see ads sprinkled throughout Lemmy instances (but the problem with that is that due to the federated nature, you can place load on one server through the API's without getting ads).

We've also already seen Beehaw defederate from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works due to the sheer volume of users creating issues around moderation (and probably server load as well) https://beehaw.org/post/567170. If that becomes a semi-constant issue I can see people leaving Lemmy, or at least not being as active as they would otherwise have been.

For now I'm enjoying things, finding it a bit "slow" but that's been a bit welcome, no more threads with thousands of comments drowning everyone out.

[–] meldroc@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

If things get big enough that hobbyist instance owners are getting overwhelmed, it might be a good idea to organize a nonprofit, under the NPR business model. Not collecting data or breaking your brain with advertisements, though periodically, they're gonna have to go hat in hand, and beg users to feed their Patreon. Hey, I'm more than happy to throw a little in!

Nice thing about this business model is that being a nonprofit, the point of its existence is to fulfill its mission (to help independent distributed social media thrive), instead of to make money for owners/shareholders.

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[–] Girru00@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

Thanks a lot for the post! Super nice to hear. Would also like to point out that "the customer is always right" was originally meant for sales. I.e. if they want a meat themed car, sell it to them, dont tell them its in bad taste. So for more ways than one treat those that serve you with respect. Theyre serving the community, not your servants.

[–] humdrumgentleman@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The comparison to Wikipedia is a really good one.

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[–] vibe@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 1 year ago (9 children)

I honestly think more instances should support some sort of donation or explicit customer model. Running such things is expensive, and sourcing money when things are ran for free is hard, so these kinds of platforms tend to be ran out of pocket, which makes them somewhat volatile. We don’t need to repeat the mistakes of big platforms and instead should build something sustainable from the get go.

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[–] Djangofett@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm just here for the spicy memes.

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