Rant incoming: This morning, I saw yet again a message of “don't sell stuff on the Fedi or I'll block you.” The pervasive mood of the “silence brand” GIF is embedded in the culture here. I get it. I was on the internet in 1994. I witnessed the influx of monetization as broadcast got wise to the power of social media. But if you (the Royal You) do not support independent/small businesses on platforms like this, we cannot hope to fund the causes that are vital to a thriving, global society 1/3
I live 20 minutes from one of the largest airports in the world. When it comes time for me to subsidize ppl who need to evacuate from autocratic states (it pains me to even think of this being a reality in the US), if I have only $1,000 & have to choose btwn paying my rent or contributing to a GoFundMe to help someone else, rent is my priority. Having disposable income comes from ppl hiring me/others like me. Disposable income allows me to support others. This is what mutual aid looks like. 2/3
Because I lived as a single mom on welfare, & have been a start up in a huge city, I know how to live on $40K a year — relative peanuts based on the cost of living in Chicago. Because I'm a small business, I don't need 100s of clients. Ten corporate clients/yr & 60 private clients would provide enough income to support our business (I have a business partner now), keep a roof over my head, & allow me to invest in others.
End rant. 3/3
P.S. Learn how to hire me: email hello@meetfutureu.com
Thanks for posting this Molly.
I've been a self-unemployed photographer for 25 years now. Giving away free advice has always been a corner stone of my business world. I think of this as marketing without doing marketing.
The line between commercial and social is so very blurred for many of us. Especially those of us who are sole-traders, with no staff or company behind us.
Many folks who do have paid employment perhaps struggle to appreciate the reality of freelance life.
@mckra1g you can get fedihired but not fedibuyer'd, or something. Plenty of artists here "advertising" their stuff, other goods should be just as acceptable. If you are annoying about it that's a mute.
@mckra1g one of the main reasons I use Mastodon for my social media is that I am trying to make my marginal living as a small independent adult publisher whose content, like all adult content, is persistently unwelcome on corporate social media. I get the people who want to make fedi spaces resemble Usenet before the Eternal September; I too remember when online commerce was gauche or taboo. But those days are gone and trying to rebuild them serves only the billionaires now.
It's also ignoring the extent to which small-scale commerce has been a part of every social space since the beginnings of recorded history. The thing that's changed is the rise of these enormous commercial outfits. Even today, my neighborhood coffee shop has a pinboard with a bunch of ads for small local businesses on it! To me, that's a part of fedi, too. @ErosBlog @mckra1g
@ben_zen @ErosBlog @mckra1g Absolutely. I shoot ISSF rifle. On both the old vBulletin boards (a couple of which still exist) and FB groups there’s an ecosystem of people selling shed-made widgets (not firearms or components, but custom knobs, sight doodads or the optician who understands the nuance of what a shooter needs from a corrective lens that Specsavers don’t). Small business has always been a part of online communities.
I'll absolutely agree with folks who don't want to see AdTech arrive on the fediverse, but to the extent that small manufacturers and niche makers need an audience, I think this one's perfect. I even found a small Alaskan fish-packer selling smoked coho on here! That's the sort of serendipity that algorithmic ads could never achieve. @richh
@ErosBlog @mckra1g
@mckra1g Someone says something like that to me, they're getting an animated GIF of the first thing that comes to mind with a blinking "SALE up to 10% off!" sign. Bye now.
That said, if all someone posts is solicitations for business, yeah, I'm throwing the Cloak of Invisibility at them.
@mckra1g Best wishes for your business :)
But actually i have no use for Advertisments from Chicago, i live in Germany. For strange reasons, i saw your post in my Timeline.
Mastodon isn't made for Ads, i think.
Correct, and thank you for adding that, Lisa. My clients have included international organizations and individuals across strata (UK, India, Germany, Ireland, Canada etc). My background includes IoT, engineering, team building, mindset and Human Resources management.
@mckra1g I don't mind people advertising their stuff on here -- there are block and mute functions for anyone who crosses my personal line, which is in "I know it when I see it" territory -- but one sure way to get me to block you is to complain about other people doing something when you could just block them and move on.
All HOAs are bastards.
@mckra1g let those asshats block you. Don’t waste your time.
@mckra1g If people find such content objectionable then by all means block it and move on. But stop being the Mastodon HOA. Nobody needs that.
Mastodon HOA? That's as bad as the Spanish Inquisition.
And nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition
@KrajciTom @hal_pomeranz @mckra1g
*Nobody* expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise, surprise and fear, fear and surprise. Our *two* weapons are fear and surprise, and ruthless efficiency.
I'm stealing "Mastodon HOA", to throw at some folk.
Totally agreed that the anti-creator / anti-small business "don't sell stuff here" attitude so many people have here is a problem ... but, be careful about the analogy.
"Mastodon HOA" and "fedi HOA" were originally used by @shengokai and @mekkaokereke to refer to the HOA-style structural and casual racism that's so endemic here. When the term gets used in a deracialized way, it's seen as erasing their perspecties - and more generally ignoring the racism of fedi and of HOAs.
Of course, others have come up with the analogy independently -- HOAs are annoying in a lot of other ways besides the racism! Still, unless you're specifically talking about the racialized aspects of people trying to police what can and can't be said here, finding another analogy will reduce the chances that your post will get taken in a way that you didn't intend it to be.
“HomeOwner Association” - An incorporated group responsible for setting standards and maintaining public facilities in a small community or housing development, typically found in the USA and Canada:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_association
HOAs have typically enforced white supremacy and segregation in communities:
https://aubreylewis2.com/the-racist-roots-of-home-owners-associations/
John Oliver has a vicious takedown of some of the worst economic aspects of HOAs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrizmAo17Os
@thenexusofprivacy @shengokai @mekkaokereke @Edelruth @mckra1g
I suppose I should further clarify that in many segregated white neighborhoods the racist aspects of the term HOA have been forgotten and it has become a term meaning a body of petty individuals policing trivial infractions to give themselves a feeling of power.
@hal_pomeranz awesome explanation, thanks! now I know, and also yes, some of mastodon does behave like an HOA, down to the racism aspect
@hal_pomeranz @mckra1g I’ve also compared Mastodon to an HOA but in terms of the particular way in which it’s racist
@MisuseCase
Oh, it's like a HOA in many, many ways. It's NIMBY central out here.
@hal_pomeranz @mckra1g
@mckra1g there's always the interesting question of how much advertising is acceptable. At what point should an additional spend be directed into improving a product/service vs. directed into promotion?
I think it's clear that far, far too much is spent on promotion and not enough on real improvements.
In that context, my tolerance for advertising on the fediverse is very low. I welcome commercial entities of all sizes, but spamming hashtags/replies/DM's is a block.
If you look at my feed, my commercial content is pinned. I provide free stuff all of the time, and also understand the nature of community. My timeline is not an RSS feed of spam. Finally, I leverage my platform (such as it is) to amplify and magnify others' messages, needs and causes. You are welcome to spend your time and money as you see fit. I make no apologies for how I conduct my business.
I don’t see the point in first building a social media network that allows so much individualized choice and control over experience, and then insisting everyone else does it exactly the same way you do, and then nagging them when then don’t. (very much agreeing with you Molly) Fortunately we can block and mute the nags as long as they don’t take over the instance admin.
@johnefrancis what's the right proportion? It doesn't need to be super precise, to the nearest 5% will be fine.
Is that just promotion vs improving the products? Where does ongoing maintenance, etc. fit in?
And how many people should I survey to work out how I should apply it? I assume the right approach is for me to use the median result from that survey?
@amcewen @johnefrancis @mckra1g The right amount depends on volume over time vs perceived value vs intrusiveness. Some store websites every third or fourth listing is Sponsored, an ad before the results, an ad on the cart, etc. They're at 25-50% ad space instead of being a store. Some websites are now 50-75% ads.
Low Quality Facts became Low Quality Ads (25-50% of posts are ads).
Once per week? Maybe, but less is better. Once or more per day? Ain't nobody got time for that.
@zimzat @amcewen @mckra1g different perspectives..."consumer/target", "vendor", "regulator".
The regulator might look at a market where all 10 participants are providing the same good/service, and competing by spending 90% of their discretionary spending on promotion. In that case, the regulator should remove the deductibility of excessive ad spend and increase the deductibility of spending on innovations.
@johnefrancis @amcewen @mckra1g Yeah, I think that highlights our difference of view point here. Mastodon, and the Fediverse in general, tends to take the view point of the consumer first, and the vendor second. Even if there are ten competitors for a product I still don't want to see 10 ads side-by-side, or in the same day, or anything of that nature. It doesn't matter if they're spending 90% or 10% or 1% of their budget if it becomes overwhelming. Otherwise it becomes more money = more power.
@zimzat @amcewen @johnefrancis @mckra1g the Low Quality Facts example is interesting to me. I mostly stumble upon their posts via the explore tab and no idea they did ads at all.
To me, this is like the best algorithm because it puts the onus on the account holder. If they spam too much, people abandon the account and stop boosting posts. As it stands enough people still follow and read them that I get to read the funniest stuff.
@sfrazer434 out of dozens/hundreds of LQF posts, I've only seen a couple of the ads. I thought they were part of the gag. I guess maybe they are.
Ads without platform amplification are pretty benign. LQF reboosts its own stuff quite a bit to get into timelines. Not particular effective. Completely non-effective it results in a block.
@amcewen @johnefrancis @mckra1g
The right amount is the amount one needs to sustain the business one has on a site. Nobody gets to determine that but the person posting.
The audience separately gets to determine how much they can tolerate and mute or block. But there's no algo, and nobody gets to HOA for anyone but themselves.
Sadly, the reality is that promotion is a requirement for any sort of business, especially smaller ones. No one WANTS to spend time or money on promotion, but it's more important to success than the quality of the product by quite a large margin.
If you want a world where small businesses, artists or anything besides megacorps exist, then the rest of us have to promote our work. We're already at a huge disadvantage in terms of visibility vs the aforementioned megacorproations
For example, the absolute dumpster fire known as: Star Wars: The Last Jedi had a box office gross of $1,322,581,071 while that same year's sundance film festival's winner''s box office gross was... $2,000,000, or about 0.15% of that, while almost certainly being a vastly superior product.
@Njord @mckra1g so far, there's no particular way to spend money on promotion here, at least no way that priviledges paid advertising ahead of anything else.
I think that's great, it solves many problems, it's why I'm here, I really hope it stays this way. It would be great if a lot of other spaces were the same.
@johnefrancis @mckra1g Yeah. Mastodon is actually one of the best places for small creators, and adding paid promotions to it would almost certainly ruin that, since adding that "feature" is always paired with removing previous discovery methods
@Njord @johnefrancis @mckra1g This is unpaid promotion, I believe.
I'm also glad it's pretty hard to synthetically market here. There's no algorithm in which to buy preference. No ad spots.
But the flip side of that is, please don't block people like me who do pretty much have to look for opportunities to mention my projects.
It's annoying for me too. But how can artists find an audience if they don't mention their work?
@mckra1g I very much hope we see more businesses here, not less. Independent businesses, but also startups, scale ups, even global brands. If that can all happen on a global, interconnected, open platform (like with the web), that's good for all.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with sharing what your company does on Mastodon and there is nothing wrong with making money from things you do.
I'm anti-corporation, but I'm not anti small business. It pepsi or McDonald's has an account here then yeah "Silence Brand" all the way. If someone want to advertise their own small business I see no issue. I plan to use this account to sell my game, assuming that's still legal by the time I finish it.
@PersistentDreamer @mckra1g what about transport companies for example give support and updates on their service? Even so commercial but not direct marketing.
For me, if a corporation is publicly traded, has stock and shareholders, sooner or later it will be a bad thing. Companies can have a positive influence on the world, but in the long run the need to meet shareholder expectations poisons any good they otherwise could have done. If ethics and money are in the same boat, sooner or later money wins. It's only a matter of time.
@PersistentDreamer it’s ridiculous, but some people don’t see a difference. Business is business to them…
I got sneered at when I was one of the first amongst my friends to start a business. I don’t know where they think the money from their paychecks are coming from.
@mckra1g It seems like they would fix the problem by blocking you (or you blocking them).
100% agree with you, it's annoying. Those people likely have a full time job that caters to their need and they never had to worry about money.
@mckra1g
I don't understand these folk threatening to block you. Nobody forces anyone to buy anything.
@Christo_459 @mckra1g
Very large businesses often have the power to do that. But to treat every business like a monopolistic corporation is decidedly immature.
If independents are prevented from advertising themselves all we'll have left is corporate monopolies.
@mckra1g this is just nuts. Some think this might be a punk rainbow heaven, but it should not be. The world, either we like it or not, is a capitalist one and one needs to eat. So individual advertising is absolutely fine for me.
Fun fact: Punk Rainbow Heaven was the name of my college grunge band.
@mckra1g Giggle. That's funny.