Forums have existed on the internet forever and and have already dealt with this thousands of times previously

The main difference is that forums aren’t federated. On Lemmy you not only need to keep in check internal users, but also external instances, and as everyone can host one, federation ads extra complexity

if an admin of an instance marks a post as potentially illegal, it gets replicated to other instances automatically and gets in queu for deletion.

This opens at some terrible abuse, just open a malevolent instant and start flagging all the content you don’t like as illegal

At the same time I hate to see the promised federated network revert to what commercial platforms have become, karma and account age requirement, phone and identity verification , forced 2fa and what not.

While I share this very same feeling, I also recognize there are reasons why commercial platforms have done what they’ve done, I don’t think they’re inherently evil, they just had to face the very same problems we have

The only objection I have with that is redundancy is useless because if the main server who “host” the community goes down then all the other copies will die too as content can’t be added anymore.

There’s no mechanic for orphan communities

Because it’s bad only if someone I don’t like does it

This is practically impossible because piracy is easy and convenient.

Ads emerged right because they are a simpler way of monetization

I’m sorry but I find this deeply comic and I can’t stop giggle

At the same time, clickbait has always existed. There’s a reason trash emerged from tv to become his own subgenre

You pay for internet connection, not internet content.

Services don’t get a penny out of what you pay your ISP

You’re absolutely right, but this is a different case I think: It’s freerider problem, people WANT to use internet services, want to use social and so on, the problem is, if possible, they don’t want to pay for it. In the scenario where we make ads completely illegal, companies will look for other ways to monetize the service, because a system which is not in break even on the long term is cursed to bankruptcy.

People want to watch Netflix, but without paying, that means that if everyone do like that, Netflix will find other ways of monetization. That’s why games became full of microtransanction and always online stuff, for example. That’s what made ads popular in the first place, don’t want to pay? No problem, here’s a free sites with ads. should socials be closed community where you can access only paying, like pay tv? Because even right now removing ads on Reddit or YouTube paying is possible.

Even Lemmy growth at a certain point will incur in this, because a platform can’t hold itself on 2 unpaid developers and free labor of volunteers who pay for server costs too.

Would we better off without these sites if we’re not willing to pay for them? Maybe yes. But what certain is that without financial stability a project can’t go far. The problem is both of the producer of the producer, sure, but also its users should wonder how much they want the platform, because it will evolve accordingly.

I use ChromeOS

It says it will bring the trains, not that they’ll actually go to 200 mph