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.
Are these spam accounts? Then they should be banned. I could only see ads in the context of keeping the servers running. I think outside of that it doesn’t make sense for this kind of platform. If lemmy.world can run entirely off of donations, then I don’t see a reason for ads at all, especially if those ads don’t even contribute to keeping the lights on.
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.
That’s fine, but if someone is making something actually interesting for a community I don’t see any reason why they shouldn’t be able to share it, provided that’s not the only reason they’re around. That gets harder to moderate, but if we’re talking “perfect world”, that’s what I would want.
I think when redittors give a product as a solution to a genuine problem asked about in the forums, (like use xyz software to handle your abc issue), that’s an advertisement as well and one we can all agree with having.
Maybe, and that’s a very distant maybe, if you have a solution that you know would interest people in a specific group, (like some car part deal in a car enthusiastic group), that can be put out there.
In any case, the general courtesy of mentioning your use case (owner, developer or just a user) of the product should be followed.
The nature of spam is that it is parasitic. Spammers don’t pay for the resources they use for advertising. They’re not sponsoring the site or funding development. Instead, they’re stealing from the commons.
It’s important that spam be unsuccessful here. Multiple Internet services have been ruined by spam before.
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 think there’s a big difference with an artist or OF model posting content and then linking to their stuff, it’s still an ad really but at least it’s relevant to the community.
These ads are just random posting, I saw the a hair transplant ad just in a random community. If they want to post a before and after pic in the bald community or whatever, that would be more acceptable. This is just annoying, bot like, spam.
If you’re asking me, I’m banning all advertisers and karma-fishers on the spot.
Out of sight, out of mind.
As the instance rules? So if anyone posts an advertising post the account is banned? Or each person blocking and moving on?
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?
It’s spam. Report it.
Honestly if money has to be a part of it I would rather just pay some instance maintainer a monthly/yearly fee.
Thanks for answering. What are you paying them for? To keep it clear of advertising, so bannning advertising accounts? Or something else? What about accounts on other instances, paying your instance owner won’t affect them?
You can already donate to your instance, and should if you can afford it 😊
Do you guys recommend that instance owners publish their monthly costs somewhere, vs donations earned? That could help ensuring instances are kept away from RC Cola® sponsored adverts.
Some do.
💀
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.
Some dude is making a living.
It is blessed that he is trying to find customer for his trade, not trying to scam people.
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.
deleted by creator
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.” 🤷🏿♂️
Reddit is far worse for it.
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.
