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I'm just waiting for Bluesky to introduce ads.
Maybe in the future, but for now it looks like they already amnounced their next step to how they'll monetize their platform.
Bluesky has revealed how it plans to start making money without necessarily having to rely on ads. The platform will remain free to use for everyone, though it’s working on a premium subscription that will provide access to profile customization tools (remember when Myspace offered that for free?) and higher quality video uploads.
I’m more surprised to discover now that it launched without ads
So did Facebook. It's the old drug dealer gambit: first hit is on the house, after that, you gotta pay.
The goal was to attract Twitter refugees. No ads helps sell the "greener pastures" the users were looking for.
Once those users are comfortable, Threads can do whatever it wants. They know how much it took to get Twitter users to leave Twitter.
People acting like Meta launched Threads out of the kindness of Zuck's heart are dumb as fuck. Threads has the same goal as Facebook: to make money selling your eyeballs to advertisers and your metadata to data brokers.
More short sighted corporate greed. It's a great period to try and pull in Twitter users but instead let's add ads for a short term bump in profits.
Why is it shortsighted? A service like this costs money to run, and if you won't pay for it, someone else has to.
They'd have to implement ads eventually anyway. Companies do have budgets, and the money to run Threads has to come from somewhere.
Companies can and do make a loss to gain market share, they ae currently doing it with the metaverse and AI.
As twitter struggles under the spastic, they should be incentivising the move for users.
I wish more federated services had built in (optional) support for enabling ads so I didn't have to constantly worry about them shutting down. Especially peer tube.
I kinda wish more federated services also had built in, optional support for directly paying the people hosting the service and infrastructure.
TIL Threads didn't have ads
"Since our priority is to build consumer value first and foremost, there are no ads or monetization features currently on Threads," a Meta spokesperson said in an emailed response.
The spokesperson then continued, "But only until early 2025. Then we'll be throwing consumer value in the trash and lighting it on fire. It will be very exciting."
They’re not even hiding the enshittification strategy. They’re practically teaching you the principles up front.
“First we trap you, then we exploit you. Duh.”
Well, this was the Facebook origin story, so anyone on Threads deserves it.
Is it enshittification if it's shit from the start?
I guess you can always make it shittier?
I never understood the appeal of Threads anyway. Like, who leaves Xitter because it’s toxic garbage and goes to something owned by Meta, who practically invented this particular flavor of toxic garbage?
Step 2 of the enshittification.
Consumer value as in number of valuable consumers we can grift later
You deserve a raise. Someone get this deadwalker a corner office!
Dear Pikachu, of course you are surprised. Learn how to expect and evade Team Rocket first.
How could those two suspiciously familiar faces with light violet and wine colored hairs possibly be Jessie and James from Team Rocket???
There aren't any ads on Mastodon. :)
Still no reason to defederate, huh?
Still no reason to defederate, huh?
No, it's not. Ads can't federate. Threads has no control over my Mastodon feed and Lemmy can't interact with Threads at all. Following Threads accounts from Mastodon is effectively an ad blocker.
Might be a stupid question, but can't threads just post ads as "posts" via activityPub? On mastodon they would appear as toots?
Was just remembering how reddit introduced ads as basically promoted posts and recall facebook doing the same.
I sure fucking hope not.
Might be a stupid question, but can’t threads just post ads as “posts” via activityPub? On mastodon they would appear as toots?
Ads in Instagram are posts in the timeline from accounts you haven't followed. Ads don't show when you visit a profile and browse its images. So for example a post by Coca-Cola might appear in the main feed even though I never followed it but it has a little "sponsored" marker in a corner to indicate that it's there because Coke paid for it and the ad placement algorithm thinks that I might be interested in that product. As Threads is a spin-off from Instagram, ads there will surely follow the very same model. Sure, you might be able to follow Coca-Cola's Threads account from Mastodon and see the post promoting their drink that way but Threads just cannot place targeted ads on Mastodon because they don't control that feed.
Thanks for the explanation. Makes sense for targeted ads for sure. Still a bit worried about hashtags being used for ads since I follow a lot of hashtags on mastodon and usually have a quite a nice "organic" feed compared to other social media.
Ads can't federate
Never underestimate facebooks capacity to enshittify. If they want to send ads as posts they will make a way. In principle the fediverse should oppose for-profit-line-go-up fuckheads, it's always the same bullshit.
I'm changing my vote in the Agora from "yes defederate" to "Hell fucking yes defederate.'
yeah that is why i chose not to donate to the instance is that my home any longer.
when they decided to keep federated with threads they decided that they didn't need my donations.
You know that blocking threads account-wide on Mastodon 2 clicks and a confirmation?
Did threads take off recently or what's the story? I thought it was unsuccessful as xitter was already the preferred platform
I was wondering that too. All I hear about is BlueSky and then suddenly this.
I see official POTUS content on Mastodon because of Threads. I'd say that's pretty taken off
I thought it was unsuccessful as xitter was already the preferred platform
It isn't anymore, ad I expect that to accelerate. The Guardian just announced today that they will no longer use it, for example (although individual journalists may still choose to do so)
Meta auto created threads accounts for all instagram users iirc so they kinda forced thwir way into the market by pre inflating their numbers.