Off topic: it's such a breath of fresh air to read this content without 1) having to close half a dozen popups and 2) all in a single post and not painfully spread out across multiple messages.
Doesn't do targeted ads, so doesn't have to have an EU cookie popup.
Doesn't have an app, so doesn't have to try to make you install the app.
Doesn't do registered users growth hacking, doesn't have to have sign-up dialog.
The problem is, if and when they decide to monetise this thing they will have to have all of these because the money people and the analytics will tell them they have to.
Everything is much more fun when it's paid by someone else, that's why the old web was so nice. The content was produced for free and the distribution was handled by VCs. Today, these VCs are recouping their investments.
You equate VC with tracking and then equate VC with anyone that provides money whatever the intention. By that logic, you imply that anyone providing money (including a mom for his 14yo son) will track everyone and gather a lot of stats and push an app ? Remember WhatsApp did cost a few bucks a year and was self sufficient, it was bought by fb not because of cost of operation but to ensure market share.
Distributing a static HTML page content does not need a VC. Nginx on an RPI on my home connection does provide sufficient level of performance and availability. If I need more because my content is way popular, I guess a monetization scheme (asking for a tip) might cover it ?
> If I need more because my content is way popular, I guess a monetization scheme (asking for a tip) might cover it ?
Hetzner will give you a powerful server for ~30 bucks/month and includes 20TB of bandwidth for free (and overages are charged at ~1$/TB, almost 90x less than AWS). That's enough to host and serve a lot of content.
I really hope you're right but I don't think it will play out that simply for mastodon. I have high hopes for it, hopefully these problems are solved but with this rate of growth, what will happen when there's a big political event that used to cripple Twitter back in the day? I don't think tips will cover it.
Mastodon (and the general "fediverse") is an inefficient disaster by design, but if you ignore that and go back to old-school forum software, your Raspberry Pi will be just fine for a few hundred concurrent users (and way more for read-only traffic).
So if I order lunch, am I providing the capital required for the venture of ordering lunch? Is there anything in the universe that's not venture capital?
> The content was produced for free and the distribution was handled by VCs
And even that, content distribution was handled by a volunteer happy to chip in a few bucks to pay for shared hosting.
Content distribution (and infrastructure in general) nowadays is cheaper than ever thanks to technological advances (today's entry-level MacBook is more powerful than a lot of servers from 10 years ago).
There is absolutely a way to distribute content for very cheap nowadays if you know how to - you just have to avoid the rent-seekers like cloud providers.
On that vein, I recently joined home-barista, an old school web forum for coffee geeks.
That site is seemingly frozen in time from the early 2000s. There are no trackers - there's no need, since it is already filled with a self selected group. The ads are just simple banners. And best of all it filled with a group of passionate, kind and helpful folks. A simpler site from a simpler time. One of my favorite haunts on the web.
Those who relied on anything were decimated in the bubble of 2001.
Also, you're pretending that all of those sites were making a profit, or operated under the assumption of making a profit. There was a lot of money thrown at any and all internet companies by the end of 1990s. It's just that the market was much smaller.
Doesn't have an app, so doesn't have to try to make you install the app.
Doesn't do registered users growth hacking, doesn't have to have sign-up dialog.
The problem is, if and when they decide to monetise this thing they will have to have all of these because the money people and the analytics will tell them they have to.
Everything is much more fun when it's paid by someone else, that's why the old web was so nice. The content was produced for free and the distribution was handled by VCs. Today, these VCs are recouping their investments.