This is the second advertising post I’ve seen on lemmy and they were both today. I’m wondering how other people feel about it or if they’ve even seen posts like this?
Personally I’m livid and hate seeing it here. One of the things that attracts me to lemmy is the donation based, volunteer run, distributed, open access nature of it. I don’t want it to become profit driven and I really don’t want to see companies in what I belive should be a purely social endeavour. I really think making it profit driven will ruin it, if that means it stays smaller then I’m okay with that.
Now I know I can block them and move on which is what I’ve done. I’m also pleased to say that both posts I saw were heavily downvoted and I did my part too.
I’m curious if other people agree with me and don’t want advertising like this on lemmy? Also, what do people think we can actually do about it if we don’t want it around? Petition instance admins to ban advertising accounts? Then how do we define one? Can anything actually be done or do I just have to block and move on from a possibly ever increasing flow of advertising until I get bored and move on?
Sorry for the long rambling post and thanks if you read this far.
Personally I think advertisements should be banned.
Brought to you by Carl’s Jr.
I like the way /r/3DPrinting handled ads. Their mods put it like this,
“It’s okay for a Redditor to have a business and share it. It’s not okay for a business to have a Reddit account and do the same.”
Basically, does that account contribute to the community outside of their business? If so, I don’t take issue with it.
“It’s okay for a Redditor to have a business and share it. It’s not okay for a business to have a Reddit account and do the same.”
That distinction is so minor it’s useless. I block all people who post dumb shit, regardless of whether they’re a business or not.
At least there are no “sponsored” posts that can’t be blocked or downvoted. That’s the real problem. If Taco Bell wants to post “dank memes”, let them. Just don’t sticky the post so it survives based on the voting. I block the meme communities anyway.
See, I’m okay with a business having an account and offering assistance. They should not advertise or proselytize, though I think a basic announcement of a new product is in a gray area.
But how can you trust that their advice or assistance is genuine and not just subtle marketing?
If you’re asking me, I’m banning all advertisers and karma-fishers on the spot.
Out of sight, out of mind.
💀
I don’t mind small businesses, creatives etc advertising themselves. When you’re self-employed, marketing / promo is incredibly difficult (speaking from personal experience). Like you say, people are free to downvote or block these ad posts. I’d be sad if I made a post promoting a service I offer as a (very!) small business and it got downvoted to oblivion out of reflexive (and understandable) ad hatred.
Once advertisers realise there are eyeballs to be reached here, they’re going to start posting. Imo it will be handled best on an instance-by-instance, or even community-by-community basis. I started a community for trance, and as an example I would not be happy if a massive multinational like Threads, or Nestle posted an ad there. I WOULD however, be happy if an event such as Luminosity, ASOT or small local club were to post an ad. There would probably have to be limits if it got out of hand.
I would suggest that you censor the spammer’s company name in the screen shot. They want to have more exposure and they don’t deserve any.
No, advertising is horrible and should not exist on Lemmy. But since it’s federated, I wonder how we stop it. The only solution seems to be moderators with quick ban hammers. And what if some instances don’t moderate for ads?
Rules are only as effective as the mechanisms enforcing them - I don’t think anyone wants ads on Lemmy instances, but removal requires moderation tools and staff (volunteer or otherwise) to review everything that’s posted.
I imagine the problem we’ll see is as growth accelerates, post velocity will outpace moderation manpower - short version, you’re always going to have to do some blocking/filtering of your own.
If it’s against the rules and people report them, then they just go through and block them as they go. I don’t think it’s a huge deal.
A report has to be reviewed for accuracy, there’s still time and resources required. It’s not as simple as just blocking every post or user that has a report submitted against them. People abuse report systems all the time.
Still better than “you’re always going to have to do some blocking/filtering of your own.” 🤷🏿♂️
I actually think its OK, its just like any other account. So simply block them and all is good. Businesses need platforms too. If you dont like that business advertising to you block them. The difference to the big social media giants is that you can’t block them cuz they pay them. Also, a bad ad will have significant less reach in lemmy/masto.
If people are going to advertise on an instance I’m involved with I would prefer they go through the instance owner and it be an avenue to fund the instance. I dislike that people want to basically plug themselves and use the instance space to advertise without paying the instance owner for it. If we have to see ads, I’d rather they help the instance exist than just be an eyesore for no gain
Ideally like the nsfw option I would like a sponsored tag to filter on. Even a tickbox to avoid sponsored stuff like the hide bot posts.
I feel like “sponsored” implies that Lemmy (be it instance admins or any platform devs) are getting something out of it, which I don’t think is the case. Right now if advertisers are signing up and posting ads i see that as no different than junk mail in my email inbox. It’s garbage that benefits no one at best and actively harms the platform at worst.
And if Lemmy does decide to take advertiser dollars, they better step carefully. That’s one of the places the slippery slope fallacy actually does apply. I do NOT want the fediverse to turn into Reddit 2.0
Lemmy doesn’t have to take a cut for it to be classified as a sponsored post.
Think about YouTube with their contains sponsored content tags in videos. YT takes no cuts from hello fresh or Nord VPN being advertised in a video. YT only gets money from the ads they roll.
Yeah, that’s a good point. But in that example there’s at least a relationship between advertiser and content creator. The content creator is showing their audience an ad in return for money from the sponsor.
Anyone advertising on lemmy right now is just getting free ad space. There’s no relationship between the advertiser and the platform/content creator. They don’t give the platform money for better servers, nor do they give creators money to create engaging content. They’re more akin to a parasite than anything of benefit.
I like it a lot better than the Reddit ads with locked comments
