The start of ads seems to always lead to a path of enshitification. One of the reasons I really like jellyfin is because they realized this and intentionally disabled recurrent donations. They saw what it does to Plex and saw the eventually the leadership’s will try to sell out and sell the company or IPO.
Jellyfin saw the way every service seemed to go once the revenue picked up and decided they want to prevent that.
Soon, when things go smoother, I absolutely wouldn’t mind either having ads or paying a low annual fee.
The problem with Reddit was seeking out vulture capital. Turning a small profit, enough to pay people something resembling wages, isn’t a bad thing.
The start of ads seems to always lead to a path of enshitification. One of the reasons I really like jellyfin is because they realized this and intentionally disabled recurrent donations. They saw what it does to Plex and saw the eventually the leadership’s will try to sell out and sell the company or IPO.
Jellyfin saw the way every service seemed to go once the revenue picked up and decided they want to prevent that.
plenty of instances including mine and some massive ones like lemmy.world are fully funded by donations.There’s absolutely no need for ads
Using lemmy is well worth the $5 per month I give them.
Wikipedia is funded via donations, de-centralized social media could be too