Comment on To survive the AI age, the web needs a new business model

• unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Just random people with their own money. Basic webhosting is cheaper than a netflix subscription.

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• swordgeek@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  The premise of a web business model is that websites must make a profit - either directly or indirectly.

  That’s utter bullshit. Some of us are old enough to remember when the web (or for that matter, the pre-web internet) was there for sharing of information, social interaction, and community. Schools, the government, and nonprofits provided hosting for free.

  Later on, ISPs started to add hosting as part of their internet service - along with usenet access and an email address. The cost to them was negligible, especially vs. the benefits of being able to say “switch to us and create your own website!”

  Nowadays you can run a site from your home PC in a VM, punch a hole through your firewall, and pay a modicum for DDNS to a custom domain for under a hundred bucks a year. If you’re a bigger site with more traffic, maybe you spin it up on AWS and pay ten or twenty bucks a month.

  The very idea that “The Web” is a homogeneous, for-profit entity is a profound and fundamental mistake that is made by every money-obsessed organization around - not just the financial rags like Forbes and The Economist, but essentially corporations as well. Take a look at the support site for your favourite product and try to convince yourself that they didn’t just put the minimum required effort in to send customers into the arms of their competitors.

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• Humanius@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Not op, but I pay for my own server, domain and IP (though it is not a static one).
  I’m not sure what you are trying to get at?

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  • Zexks@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    So what’s your public facing site address and we’ll see how we’ll it can hold against the onslaught on the net. You gonna pay to host all the YouTube videos too. Do you host instances for thousands of others to mess with. What SaaS offerings does your site present. If you’re not sure what my point is you’re not informed enough to present a legitimate argument.

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    • swordgeek@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      If you’re not sure what my point is you’re not informed enough to present a legitimate argument.

      Or maybe you didn’t present your point clearly.

      Or maybe you’re just wrong.

      These are entirely possible scenarios you might want to consider.

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    • Jason2357@lemmy.ca ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      fyi, the way you write seems like you are upset over something. It’s somewhat odd to write that on a website that is hosted by volunteers on a shoestring budget for thousands of users “against the onslaught on the net.” So you better understand, anything besides youtube videos (i.e., the majority of the content on the net) is fairly economical to host. Of course it depends on the system, but a small group can easily stand up something dynamic like a lemmy instance, and an individual can host their static blog for basically free -open to the wide internet. Youtube is hard because video uses an incredible amount of bandwidth. Google looses money on it, despite it being plastered with advertising. So even capitalism hasn’t figured out how to do it yet without being subsidized by another revenue stream.

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    • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      You gonna pay to host all the YouTube videos too.

      We already pay for this through time theft and involuntary brainwashing known as “ads”.

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