You may have heard the bad news: Discord is adding ads. This affects most of you reading this post because since the beginning of Steemit and onto Hive, Discord has been the unofficial chat app of Hive. We hang out there, getting to know each other better, we do business there, making OTC deals or plans, and we follow Hive news and news of our favorite Hive tribes there. There have been some attempts to replace Discord over the years. Telegram has become a somewhat common second chat-app in some tribes, and both Ecency and Peakd have their own internal chat apps. Despite this, nothing has really replaced Discord and I'd guess most Hive users are on it at least every few days.
So, again, enter the bad news: Ads are coming!
There is some question about what these ads will be and who they will target, but they are coming. It is also conceivable that if you access Discord in the browser, your ad blocker may be able to block the ads. But they are coming. By this point in the life of the Internet, we know how this usually goes: a service introduces ads, users ignore or block them; the service, stubbornly trying to make this model work, makes the ads even more annoying and harder to block, users continue to ignore them; so, the service makes them even more annoying and pervasive and almost impossible to block, maybe the service even starts requiring the user clicks on an ad, and this keeps increasing to the point that users get fed up and stop using the service, and the service starts to decline in quality.
In browsing about this news story, I came across this story, which has this in the subtitle: "Discord is going to run ads, because nobody knows how to make money on the internet.". Because no one knows how to make money on the internet.
I read that and thought, "Hmm... just how does one make money on the internet?"
Let's count the ways:
- Sell a product or service.
- Get donations or other support from fans and patrons
- Run ads
- Figure out some other way (a no-ad way) to get support from sponsors.
Web3 blockchains like Hive try to add to this model by paying us to curate, but this is basically #1 above, selling a service.
Is there any other way? Has there ever been any other way? Either we are relying on regular people—their kindness at paying us or buying what we make—or we are relying on corporation; and in that case we are trying to avoid running ads while they are trying to encourage us to run ads.
I guess there is a fifth way: corruption. Some people would call, for example, the DHF corrupt. Just look at some of those approved proposals and how little we have to show for them. But that's neither here nor there. Corruption is something to be avoided, so we won't consider that option.
I think the first two of those options are always the most desirable, and of those option two is probably the most popular. Idealistically we'd all love to live in a world where we didn't have to be salesmen, where we could just give away what we make and be rewarded enough by someone or someones to not have to worry about money. This may be fantasy, but it's a popular fantasy. Utopia! Most of the internet is built on this fantasy. Blogging, even web3 blockchain blogging like Hive, completely embraces this fantasy. Write, give away your writing freely, and have people give you money in return without you asking; money that we all one day hope will be enough to pay for our life. There are always enough people who make this a reality to encourage and motivate the rest of us enough to chase the dream.
The second two of those options, #3 & #4, no one wants, but everyone eventually seems to turn to, and of those it always eventually becomes ads. No one likes ads, except perhaps the CEO of corporations or the shareholders, but we turn to it in the end because it is the only reliable payer.
Did I miss anything? Micropayments come to mind, but that is basically #2 above. Of any patron model, micropayments seem like the most realistic and possible. That's what the blogging at Hive basically is. But for that to work for most people we need to have a huge user base, much much larger than Hive currently is.
Can you think of any other?
Anyway, no conclusions here. Just thinking about that subtitle, which strikes me as completely true. Let me know your thoughts, and... prepare yourself for seeing Ads on Discord.
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David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon. |
