i realized one reason bluesky is so cozy, theres no ads at all. really going to suck when this place inevitably starts putting ads everywhere. i wish we could live in an internet where zero ads is possible
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the other day someone posted a picture of an ad from the bad app and I was like "oh fuck what happened what app am I on" but I figured it out, and it made me realize yeah the lack of ads is what makes this nice
We did, once. There was less on it, but we also had the wild-eyed misconception that access to information would drive a new wave of enlightenment and quash ignorance. Boy were we wrong.
i believe they don't plan to do ads like twitter because everything is so public that they have no way of doing anything with it. that's what they talked about in the blog post anyways
hey! the last time I checked the hellsite (yesterday) for how many blocks I was up to, they no longer showed the number... I figured they were being intentionally obfuscatory
I figured it was something like that. In the meantime, when I popped over to the hellsite to check, I got up to speed on the latest news about the ex-mayor who spread covid via fart, and closed that tab really quickly.
If Twitter Blue had simply been ad-free Twitter, with some additional bookmark features, and no blue check (and Musk hadn't otherwise ruined Twitter in myriad cretinous ways) it would have had significantly more uptake
Yeah, it's called Mastodon or Calckey or whatever. Choose a great instance, put a little effort into learning about it, and you'll have one hell of a time.
Of course, you can always stay here and wait for the unavoidable. Nothing bad with that.
half my time on twittoid is spent blocking promoted accounts and they truly just keep coming. if im scrolling someones page, i have to click into the ad tweet to block it, otherwise it just force scrolls me back to the top and doesn't get rid of the tweet despite successfully blocking
idk I kind of liked seeing promoted content from brands that are misaligned from my ethical compass and having the stupid takes of tech bros forced upon me, made me appreciate everything in between even more
bluesky (the company) is opposed to the idea of advertising as a business model so I think we'll be safe from seeing promoted posts and whatnot. though I'm sure brands will show up on here one day, they should be easy to block.
I would frankly pay some amount of money for the full app if it meant no ads. Like BlueSky, the finished product, costs $10 for the ad-free version? Done.
I'd actually pay for that. If Musk hadn't been an egregious piece of shit, and would've offered us no ads, I would have forked over that 8 bucks there, too.
The ability to block individual advertisers was in fact the best Twitter feature. Love to get the weirdest garbage ads because I blocked everyone normal
well yeah but the client, the appview, and the BGS are all swappable, so it would be trivial to replace those items with something that doesn’t have ads.
tbh I'd prefer to pay a small monthly fee (given that this site's owner isn't a reprehensible person) than have to wade through ads.
would be neat if there was a choice between the two, so the ad-tolerant would still get to enjoy a free service.
I would pay to stay add free. I started paying for my email to get away from adds. I started paying for my online storage to get away from adds. I abhor people shoving stuff I don't need in my face. The best products spread by word of mouth
Tumblr does an ad-free option for $5 a month. They're also not exactly the shining stars of making a profitable site but at the very least I wouldn't mind seeing that as an option here!
Nah it's more so there aren't so many people, and it feels like a calm private club. besides, after experiencing Twitter, you could see calmness in a bar fight
I was just thinking about this. No ads have been amazing. I hope they add videos and gifs soon. I have had a great experience so far. It’s nice not having so many conspiracy theorists and nazis.
I've been thinking a lot about the invite system as well. Yeah, it slows growth by a lot, however, it also means that people who want to make alts, people who want to make bot farms, and wrong headed people can't easily spread or even propagate.
If 1 account is seen as giving many invites to accounts who constantly bend/break rules, they can be dealt with by simply notifying them they will loose their invite privilege if they continue to invite bad actors.
I wish there was a Twitter/BlueSky/Whatever which was not privately owned and was considered as a public utility, without ads, open algorithms and source code, etc... social media is too important to be dictated by the needs for profitability.
There's been a fucklong thread elsewhere, but basically - yeah, that's why they don't like it. I used to think that "it's not *that* hard" but then I just realized that... it kind of is.
I also find it unusable, because it forces me to follow people. The way I used Twitter, I basically just marked things as like, or used mute/hide and automagically I got stuff I was interested in.
I could not figure how to make Mastodon usable (for me).
that's the end goal here. everything needed to connect to bluesky will be able to be hosted independently, effectively meaning nobody will be able to own it.
I can look past ads; the problem, I think is more the big corporate accounts, including media. And I'm not against media companies, it's just they don't actually participate in real dialogue.
I think this is one of the reasons why I love reading so much; it’s one of the few artistic mediums that isn’t absolutely packed with advertising. Sure, there’s an odd ad in the front or back matter, but never in the actual part people read.
Well if they stick to the main selling point on their public site, the open protocol, it should always be relatively trivial to build third party clients that do whatever
They could have contextual ads in the right rail. They'd make plenty of money, and the user experience would be fine. Ads don't have to be the way the ad-tech industry makes them.
Ads showing up in the replies to tweets on Twitter was one of the most off-putting changes on Twitter. Not as off-putting as selling blue checks to Nazis and crypto guys, but a special hell all its own.
Just weeks ago I’d point out that I read Twitter using Friendly, an app that strips promoted tweets out of my timeline. (It uses the web app, so still works post-api.)
So, you can do that? But I only bring it up now because I’m struck by how useless offering advice re using Twitter feels anymore.
I know of one such site, actually. Long ago, there was a Swedish gaming magazine and its associated forum. But fans (and some former staff) kept the domain and reworked it. Now it's an ad-free site and adblockers have... nothing to block. Everything loads virtually instantly. It's a delight.
Same with Counter Social. No advertisers, no media beyond what people choose to post links to. People can donate to the upkeep of the site or pay for Pro, but even the basic version is amazingly free of trolls, bots, and ads.
In North Korea their social media has no ads but you see stuff like this every three posts and if you don’t salute it on the phone’s front camera they send you to prison
I like the ads on like Discovery+ where you absolutely must interact with them to move on. Here's the new Volvo SUV, you must scroll through its images to continue. There is no escape. You need this Volvo. Now back to "Love It Or List It" from 13 years ago.
As someone with severe adhd and zero impulse control, I rely on targeted advertising to help me spend money I don't have on shit I don't need.
How else am I supposed to feel bad about myself?!
fundamentally people are expecting internet services to be free (read: ads) nowadays and frankly it sucks. all the media paywalls are an attempt to pull that back, but everyone (myself included) complains about those!
I am absolutely someone who will pay to have ads removed. I pay $5/month to Tumblr so I don't see ads, I have the premium tier of Tidal so I don't hear ads, etc etc etc.
Over time we've come to make terms with the fact that most resources worth our time cost money and these things don't operate out of thin air. If a reasonably priced subscription is the key to keep things nice and working, maybe we should be warming up to it, as much as I hate subs everywhere. 🥲
every third post I see on twitter is an ad for some shit like "CryptobloxAI" or something and it gives me the urge to repeatedly smash my forehead into the corner of my desk
Sure, but the app is the least interesting thing. It’s the people who make a place worth visiting, and ads will change the tenor and drive people away. That there’s a (theoretical) federated alternative is meaningless because unless it’s the same folks in the same web of relations, it’s nothing.
I’ll reseve judgement, but I suspect that some folks will stay, and some will leave, and the ad supported networks will necessarily have to start gating content. Basically, ads ruin everything, and I don’t see a way for an expensive service to run in today’s economy without ads
$20 seems kinda high in comparison to other regular services. The only common thing I can think of that's going over $15 is Adobe. (Technically a yearly bill that's paid monthly)
Also, $20/month might not sound like a lot on a first world budget, but on Global South economies it certainly is. That would create an uncalled for elitist barrier. Honestly if Melonhusk thinks $8/mo is okay, Bluesky could say $5 and still gather enough subscribers to become profitable.
It is an unreasonable amount - I was not seriously suggesting it. I don't think $5 is enough to become profitable and I'm not sure $8 is either - Elon is charging $8 and still selling your personal data to pay the bills (and has money coming in from all of the people seeing ads)
Sorry I talked about it as a serious proposal.
Not sure anything financially Twitter is doing right now could be helpful in evaluating how much a fee would need to be for developing an infrastructure while also making profit without any other means of income.
There almost isn't a service one can look at - every major player in this space is selling your data on top of ad revenue or has some other significant form of income.
Discord maybe?. I guess that sets a maybe-a-baseline-amount of $10ish which sounds probably realistic.
i would've gleefully paid $8/mo for an ad-free twitter (before elno wrecked it) with no other benefits, and i was stunned to learn the paid subscription didn't eliminate ads.
i'll pay for my usage or you can let advertisers pay for it, but we're not both going to pay for it.
It won’t be long before more people join Bluesky and the creator has to add in some sort of ads to get some sort of revenue to keep the app afloat. Let’s savour this add-free moment while it still lasts.
Let us hope that it always remains so. I'm hopeful that since Bluesky is more akin to a public utility, there will be a serious effort to avoid ad revenue
The services cost money and I want to pay for them if I use them. Unfortunately most people would never pay money if there is a ad-based version. I read only few YouTube users pay for YouTube Premium.
I truly believe the issue is the price of entry. Make it a couple bucks, instead of 8. $12 for a year of Bluesky. But EVERYONE pays it. Makes it a place where the people here are the people that actually want to be here, but still attainable for the vast majority of people.
I long for a world not plastered advertisements telling me to buy things and making people crazy and hating themselves because they don’t live up to the fake ideals of advertisements. How much of our ideas about the world are shaped by entities telling us to buy things?
I've still never once seen an ad or promoted Tweet on Twitter but I'm guessing that's going to change now that my app is dead and TweetDeck is going away.
With Elon Musk, prepare for all possible stupidity unknown to mankind. He is after all a man-child throwing tantrums. The cute iconic bird logo is gone or going to disappear all together soon. Replaced with the dumbest looking X ever.
The ad-free internet isn't a place so much as it's a time - 1991, when the Web was still in its infancy, dial-up was the way to connect, and all backgrounds were grey.
Exactly, and I've read articles stating that that Bluesky also wants to federate, so hopefully we'll stay ad-free. Like I said in another comment, Counter Social, which is also federated, is self-supporting and ad free, so it can be done.
It's a federated social media site with a lot of security perks. It used to be part of Mastadon. No invite needed. It's not the most lively place, but Husk's antics have caused a surge new members. I haven't seen any in-fighting or trolling in the 8 months I've been on it. 🤞🏼
It's only a matter of time before bluesky ends up like every other platform because eventually they'll need to make money and any amount they charge for any features will feel like too much when the whole thing was free originally.
It would be great, but in order to be profitable they will need them. I would pay for an ad free space. I left #Gmail because of ads and the data mining. I now pay for #ProtonMail. Same for apps. I pay to remove ads.
I read that Bsky is also moving toward federation. If it runs like the other federated site I'm on, at least half the funding will be from users deciding how much they'd like to donate for site upkeep.
absolutely that, and maybe the lack of videos in general? like, i *want* video posts but can see how them not being a thing rn makes everything seem more laid back
You might like the fediverse platforms like Mastodon, FireFish, Friendica, and many others. They all tend to operate on a "public-good" basis rather than for-profit and have strong communities that cover costs via donations 😁
I wonder what the minimum cost of keeping the servers running for something like this is, doesn't seem totally impossible to run a social media site on a wikipedia style volunteers and donors model
It's that or subscription fees I guess. And the thing with social media is while you will get the devoted core willing to spend that, you won't get the critical mass of random strangers that makes social media fun.
Alternatively, one can be satisfied with a small community behind paywall (see SA)
step 1: implement ads
step 2: figure out how much $ per month each user generates in ad revenue on average ($x)
step 3: create ad-free option for $x/mo
ads suck but server costs ain’t free unfortunately
Yeah it was jarring in a good way coming here from facebook. Got so used to working around the ads that it felt like a burden on my subconscious was lifted
It is. We do. I remember the internet before ads became a popular way to fund things, and there are lots of other ways to do stuff, like eg Signal, Matrix, distributed... Mastodon usually doesn’t have ads because the individual instances are small/self-supported, and the same might be true of BSky.
For me it's the lack of a trending tab sitting on the side of the screen at all times. It's a semi regular occurrence where I glance at the What's Happening Feed on twitter wishing it didnt exist. Especially now when every twitter trend is about twitter.
That's the funniest part of Twitter Blue. There's still no way to use the site without ads. Some of the wealthiest people in the world use Twitter and they still have to see promoted tweets like this
only one time in my life did I fall for an ad and I will never forgive JonTron for telling me to play raid shadow legends. I hate ads; block all ads at the router level. root your phone and close your eyes at billboards
I got a plugin on my browser that successfully blocked ads, promoted tweets and even the 'for you' tab on Twitter. I hope there will be something similar for BlueSky, should that ever happen
Every site should have a toggle to turn ads off and it's extremely easy to do but like 40% of people are too stupid/lazy so only the real marks see them
Dumbfuck buys the place and jacks the ads up 10x and all his loser fans and economist cronies are like "well he has to make money on it somehow" and I'm just like 1. no he doesnt, he has enough money to run the place for free forever, and 2. he will never make back what he spent on it so foh w/that
I jokingly suggested a bit ago, that they have completely pointless little badges on your page that add no functionality, they're just annoying silly collectable things to show support. Like how b3ta used to do
At the moment, Bluesky exists as close as you can get to being outside of the typical profit model for websites under capitalism. If we built the internet on open crowdsourced platforms, we’d be so much better off. Hopefully bsky goes about the transition to public in a less-awful way than others.
I think ads are an issue but what’s worse is the sterilization of the internet under the guise of “advertiser friendly.” Marginalized communities can barely talk about their experiences without being suppressed on sites like TikTok & YouTube.
it's basically like joining the microblogging version of a discord server if discord mods had the ability to ban you from talking to your friends in other servers
most people just trying to find a place to post do not want to have to do a shitload of homework to make sure they don't accidentally choose the wrong instance, they just want to have a place to post
mastodon fails hard at practical data sovereignty: the source server has to exist to migrate your data, which i found out the hard way when stoners dot social disappeared without warning due to admin error.
I’ll be real, I didn’t like not knowing how to use it and I didn’t feel like learning. I’m here to shitpost and talk about Pokémon… and that’s kinda it.
Yea, I've long said that I'd be happy to pay a few bucks a month for ad free experiences. That's why I absolutely pay for Discord Nitro. Gotta keep these services afloat sans ads.
Surely because of the nature of the AT protocol we can always move to a different user interface if this place becomes festered with ads or paid services, yknow?
I also would be happy to pay like 10 per month if the site owners care about user experience and aren't terrible people. Jack is really sus though so idk if I'd pay him money at the moment.
It's also cozy for the same reason G+ was so cozy in the beginning: no trolls, people being more authentic, content being shared that has real value and members who truly want to listen and talk. It's refreshing!
Agreed, it changes as the network size grows. G+ fragmented into interest bubbles that managed to maintain the relationships and value almost to the end but the experience changed. The initial buzz though is brilliant. This place rocks!
My podcast Boring Books for Bedtime is intentionally ad-free, and more and more I'm getting notes from listeners and Patreon supporters thanking me for giving them one tiny ad-free space in digital life. It's everywhere and it is exhausting! I will be sad when the inevitable happens here, too.
I do the same with my show. I think it's good to try to make content without ads if you can.
I'd rather see ads though if it's the only way a large platform could maintain the physical infrastructure needed to back up an app like this. I don't know the ins and outs of it all though.
If they started a voluntary donation of $20 a year off the top, they'd make enough that they could go ad-free for as long as they liked... until they went public and had shareholders to answer to.
Comments
- Data
- Ad
And probably charging the #Elders.
😕
Of course, you can always stay here and wait for the unavoidable. Nothing bad with that.
maybe someone could make a Brands mute list
would be neat if there was a choice between the two, so the ad-tolerant would still get to enjoy a free service.
I could not figure how to make Mastodon usable (for me).
But, it must be done respectfully and with some decency.
Here, it's cozy maybe because of the moderation team, which seems to be great!
I use 1Blocker. https://1blocker.com
So, you can do that? But I only bring it up now because I’m struck by how useless offering advice re using Twitter feels anymore.
It’s incredibly sad the former bird app didn’t realize that before things went south.
but this is literally mastodon / fedi , the only ads I've seen here and on fedi are creators wanting to sell stuff.
other than that it's mutual aid all the away down.
bsky might get ads but I feel others would just not show them.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/08/blueskys-growing-pains-strain-relationship-with-its-black-community-moderation/
How else am I supposed to feel bad about myself?!
(Terms and conditions apply)
If they do do ads and they bring everything else the say, the should allow for a paid ad free version at low cost (3$/mo)
it's the same people on the same network in the same web of relations, just a different client without ads
there's so much bigger problems
Not sure anything financially Twitter is doing right now could be helpful in evaluating how much a fee would need to be for developing an infrastructure while also making profit without any other means of income.
Discord maybe?. I guess that sets a maybe-a-baseline-amount of $10ish which sounds probably realistic.
i'll pay for my usage or you can let advertisers pay for it, but we're not both going to pay for it.
Maybe the service needs to stay smaller (no hosted video?) to maintain it...but perhaps it would be worth it to have ONE place without ads.
At least, I haven't seen any
It'll be a dark day when Steak Umms gets a code
(Almost) No corporate accounts
Lots of weirdoes.
It's great.
Hell pop up blockers used to be a separate application you’d run!
Getting to the really weird esoteric ads that show up after you block all the big players is fun
Alternatively, one can be satisfied with a small community behind paywall (see SA)
step 2: figure out how much $ per month each user generates in ad revenue on average ($x)
step 3: create ad-free option for $x/mo
ads suck but server costs ain’t free unfortunately
Still, you're right
jk. feel the same way: atmosphere changes when people see ads; reminder they're using a product. i never want to know i'm using a product.
but yeah I guess it is a bit like that.
i lost everything and now recommend against it.
ads enrage me
I'd rather see ads though if it's the only way a large platform could maintain the physical infrastructure needed to back up an app like this. I don't know the ins and outs of it all though.