Hey Fediverse,
I’ve been thinking about how we can improve lemmy and make it even more dynamic and supportive. Here’s an idea I believe could really make a difference: a paid awards and donations feature. Other fediverse platforms such as Peertube already support this
What’s the Idea?
Imagine being able to give a little back to those posts or comments that really made you think, laugh, or feel connected. Here’s how it could work:
- You come across a great post or comment.
- You give it an award, with a small donation attached.
- This donation gets split four ways: 30% to the poster, 30% to their instance admin, 30% the community’s moderators and 10% to the lemmy developers.
Why split it this way? Because it’s not just about rewarding great content. It’s also about supporting the people who keep our spaces running and vibrant.
Why This Matters
- a direct way to support and encourage each other.
- Helps keep our communities and their admins going strong.
- It’s a small change, but it could really deepen our connections here.
- it gives a middle finger to Reddit, and we all want that :P
Wrapping Up
I really believe this could make Lemmy a more rewarding place for everyone. Let’s discuss and see if we can make this happen together!
Looking forward to hearing what you all think.
EDIT: it seems that most of the comments are focusing on the crypto aspect. I’m open to non crypto alternatives
EDIT 2: Removed all references to bitcoin’s lightning network, because that wasn’t at all the point of this suggestion but it seemed that people focused on that aspect in particular. If there are solutions that don’t depend on crypto, I would prefer those, it was just the first thing that came to mind.
You must log in or register to comment.
How about we not monetize human interaction here too!
No, thank you. Let’s keep that on Reddit.
Is there a reason why you dislike the idea?
Nope. No highlighting karma, and especially not karma actually worth something. That just asks for people who only care to game the system to start flooding the network. Your noise to signal ratio will plummet. And how will you handle it per instance? What’s to stop someone from spinning up an instance of bots and auto voting on all of their stuff?
A million times no.
That just asks for people who only care to game the system to start flooding the network
How so?
And how will you handle it per instance? What’s to stop someone from spinning up an instance of bots and auto voting on all of their stuff?
What reason would there be to do that that doesn’t already exist today?
Perhaps there is a little misunderstanding going on about what this proposal is about. Are you aware of Reddit’s feature where you can award certain comments with a small award that shows up as visual flare? I’m proposing the same feature, but in a more decentralized and user centric manner.
Awards encourage farming for them. It’s human nature. And you attached actual money to them(the donations). So it has real value.
I don’t care how you distribute it. It’s a bad idea. It’s a terrible feature of reddit that should have never existed in the first place. If Lemmy added this, I’d leave in a heartbeat.
Oh, and you asked for opinions, and then downvoted me for giving mine. Really bringing that reddit vibe over, huh?
Awards encourage farming for them. It’s human nature. And you attached actual money to them(the donations). So it has real value.
I can see your point, but I think that the benefits outweigh the negatives and that we should somehow incentivize well thought out content, and in general I believe that micro donations should become more common on the internet. This is the best way in my opinion to encourage more people to use (and work on) decentralized systems. I have been a big proponent of donations for good content and good software for at least a decade
Oh, and you asked for opinions, and then downvoted me for giving mine. Really bringing that reddit vibe over, huh?
I did not downvote you, but in general I use upvotes and downvotes to show agreement or disagreement, it’s never personal
Obligatory mention of Linus law of trail and error:
“Don’t ever make the mistake [of thinking] that you can design something better than what you get from ruthless massively parallel trial-and-error with a feedback cycle. That’s giving your intelligence much too much credit.”
Create a instance and lets see what happens.
Overall i think allowing donation is a good idea, supporting independent creators is good because big companies tend to go after the Lowest common denominator.
There is also mitra.
Didn’t know about mitra, thanks for sharing!
Regarding Linus’s quote, I completely agree with him and that’s mostly why I asked for feedback; I don’t have the time to work on this myself at the moment, and even if I did I want to hear conflicting opinions on the implementation before I did anything
I would much rather support my instance directly, and I wouldn’t touch crypto with a 10ft pole
Found OPs LinkedIn
I’ll use that in the future haha
I get your trepidation about crypto in particular, and I agree for the most part when it comes to the majority of crypto, but there are a few reasons why I think the bitcoin lightning network would work here:
- Micropayments are not really that easy to do with traditional payment technologies
- Traditional payment technologies are complex to integrate with for decentralized systems
- Unlike most crypto, bitcoin at the very least isn’t a scam
- There is precedent in both the fediverse and the internet at large; peertube supports this and the podcasting 2.0 movement supports this
You are really talented at hitting all the cryptobro notes while making sure to avoid all the cryptobro language, but we all have a lot of experience dealing with this capitalist cancer and it simply isn’t going to work on a platform specifically created to be anticapitalist.
Consider taking your marketing fart-huffing to out of touch money-hungry CEOs, they’ll be far more receptive.
I really don’t want to turn this into a crypto discussion, if you think there are better alternatives I’m open to hearing about them; I’m mostly interested in rewarding people for their content and paying for instance admins and lemmy developers. You’d be surprised how much you and I probably agree on regarding crypto
I have been banned from so many places for my unyielding and extremely passionate anti-crypto stance, you can fuck right off with that “we have more in common” shit. I for one don’t find young people to be attractive, nor do I see everything as a moneymaking opportunity.
Lemmy is an anticapitalist platform, and you’re too blinded by your own avarice to see that. Go ahead and report me for being “disrespectful” the admins are going to take one look at your instance name and immediately add it to the defederation list because you are the bad guy.
I for one don’t find young people to be attractive
I’m curious where this statement came from since I don’t see any context other than you trying to call the OP names?
Could you expand please?
As the person being accused of this, I’d like to know, too.
Any form of monetization across the board will inevitably lead to all the shitty aspects of Reddit that most of us despised. Shilling and turning it into a competition for these fucking awards etc.
We can already donate to admins if we like.
Why can’t we contribute just to have fun, why should there be some kind of an award? Besides, that’s just like the awards on Reddit and we know how well those work. The same one-liner under every post, flooded with awards.
This system just encourages farming and creates a hive mind mentality. Lemmy is great the way it is.
That’s fair, I mostly came up with the idea because I saw a comment mentioning awards like in Reddit and I’m a huge proponent of paying for FOSS applications and for content online, so that’s why I opened this up for discussion
Take your crypto scheme and shove it back where it came from.
If we have to use crypto (which I don’t really see a reason for to be perfectly honest), then I’d much rather seean privacy coin like Monero being used.
I can see your point but don’t you think that monero adds friction? you want something quick and easy that users don’t have to think about
