I’ve been thinking a lot recently about PeerTube, Loops, Bandwagon, and other platforms in the Fediverse that are geared around artists. I might get flamed for this, and you’re welcome to disagree, but I think the network is in dire need of having support for commerce.

Not “Big Capitalism” commerce, but the ability for people to buy and sell things, support projects, and commission their favorite creators to keep making more stuff.

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[–] dbtng@eviltoast.org 13 points 2 weeks ago (22 children)

Hey, um .... I read your article. Or I tried to.
It lost me at the point where I need to give money to somebody else. So, basically right at the start.

To be more specific, your article starts of lamenting that its not convenient enough for me to give money to someone ("content creators", a bullshit term if I've ever heard one) on these federated platforms. "this is a bit of a problem" There's no examination of whether we should be doing this. Its taken as a given that monetization is a positive goal.

So ... I really tried to get there and understand your point, but there's this vast gulf between us.
Why would it be bad if nobody makes any money off the fediverse?
That sounds good to me.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 weeks ago (9 children)

Not OP, but I'd work real fucking hard to give us something that can be a viable alternative to Youtube where a corporate monopoly doesn't take 95% of the cash. It doesn't even need to be federated, but we all see the shithole Odysee immediately became. We have a substantial number of people here with like interests and marginally like feelings on a lot of topics that would make great video content.

Peertube has been around for 7 years, and there isn't enough content on it to occupy even a Linux nerd for more than 30 minutes a week. People are only making videos on YouTube because they can make some semblance of a living at it.

I think giving people who are willing to create videos some decent tools for monetization in open products would be a reasonably good idea. We have nothing there now; we don't have anything to lose by it. It's not like great content that doesn't exist can be walled off to us.

This could be as easy as forking peertube and putting in patreon privitization links. Or it could be a federated version of KoFi that ties in.

[–] dbtng@eviltoast.org 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Ok, I quibble with much of what you just wrote, but your first line contained a lucid point.

In essence, you propose that a federated monetization scheme would direct the bulk of the pie to the participants and not to the big corporate interests.

Now that's a damned interesting thing to consider.
I think its obvious that it would/will go awry. Any time you get non-profits screwing around with money, somebody figures out how to steal it.
But if even a bit more went to the participants and paid for infrastructure, that would be a positive thing.

But again ... non-profits and coops never handle money correctly. Watch this get all the way to the goalpost and then swoop, it all gets handled with GooglePay. Its doomed. DOOM.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 weeks ago

I think its obvious that it would/will go awry.

I'm not even sure that is possible, but I'd like to see us try something.

Maybe the best place to start is by allowing a microtransaction service into the UI and let people add their own API keys to known players.

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