<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><div><div><div>Dear all,</div></div></div><span id="OLK_SRC_BODY_SECTION"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><div><div style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br></div><div style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Allow me to briefly introduce myself. I am a Belgian journalist interested in new economic and social models. Trebor Scholz was so kind to add me to this mailing list.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Be assured I will not quote from these internal discussions. If I would like to use something, I will mail you individually to ask permission. If you do not grant it, no problem at all.</div></div></div></span><div><br></div><div>I find the discussion on Elle truly interesting. But unless I have missed it, none of you have raised the option that Ello could finance it's operations through voluntary donations, i.e. the Wikipedia model. As Andreas Kolbe of Wikipediocray <a href="http://wikipediocracy.com/2014/09/21/wikipedia-keeping-it-free-just-pay-us-our-salaries/">mentions in this article</a>, the revenue stream can be quite impressive (I'm ignoring the question here if WMF is any good at spending it).</div><span id="OLK_SRC_BODY_SECTION"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><div><div style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Couldn't this be a viable financing option for #Ello? What are the (dis)advantages?</div><div style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br></div><div>All the best,<br><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; color: rgb(34, 34, 34);"><font color="#000000" face="Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px;"><br></span></font></div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: medium;"><font style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: arial; font-size: 12px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">-- Daan</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><br></span></font><div style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">______________________________</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><wbr></span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">_</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px;">__</span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px;">__</span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px;">__</span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px;">__</span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px;">__</span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px;">__</span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px;">_</span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px;">_</span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px;">_</span><span style="font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana;">__</span><span style="font-size: 12px; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">______</span></span><span style="font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana;">_</span><span style="font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana;">_</span><span style="font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana;">_</span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px;">_</span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px;">__</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">_</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">_</span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px;">_</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">_</span><span style="font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana;">_</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">_</span></div><div><font style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: arial; font-size: 12px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><font color="#000000"><b>Daan Ballegeer</b> </font></span></font><span style="font-size: 12px;">| </span><span style="font-size: 12px;">Mobile: +32 486 870 898</span><span style="font-size: 12px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12px;">| </span><span style="font-size: 12px;"><a href="https://twitter.com/daanballegeer" target="_blank"><font color="#000000">@daanballegeer</font></a> </span><span style="font-size: 12px;">| <a href="http://www.daanballegeer.be"><font color="#000000">daanballegeer.be</font></a></span></div></div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: medium;"></div></div></div><div style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br></div><span id="OLK_SRC_BODY_SECTION" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><div style="font-family:Calibri; font-size:11pt; text-align:left; color:black; BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0in; PADDING-LEFT: 0in; PADDING-RIGHT: 0in; BORDER-TOP: #b5c4df 1pt solid; BORDER-RIGHT: medium none; PADDING-TOP: 3pt"><span style="font-weight:bold">From: </span> Andrew McNicol <<a href="mailto:mcnicolandrew@gmail.com">mcnicolandrew@gmail.com</a>><br><span style="font-weight:bold">Date: </span> woensdag 1 oktober 2014 01:15<br><span style="font-weight:bold">To: </span> <<a href="mailto:idc@mailman.thing.net">idc@mailman.thing.net</a>><br><span style="font-weight:bold">Subject: </span> [iDC] RE. Ello--Alternative to Facebook<br></div><div><br></div><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><div>Hi all,<br><br></div><div>I thought I would quickly comment on the 'payment for privacy' part of this discussion.<br><br></div><div>Elliot wrote:<br></div><div><br><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex" class="gmail_quote">I too would gladly pay a user fee to avoid the monetizing of my data, on FB
especially, and Ello's model of voluntary payment seems to at least throws
a bone to that option.<br></blockquote><br></div><div>This is not an uncommon desire, but it appears to not have worked in bringing a significant userbase to <a href="http://app.net">app.net</a>, likely due to it being somewhat exclusionary (you originally had to pay) so the userbase was small. (Or perhaps it was just the wrong time for the platform?) I'm actually a bit surprised none of the newer (and big enough to register on the radar of popular discourse) platforms have adopted the ad-supported vs. paid option model, as livejournal has literally been doing this for over a decade.<br><br></div><div>The main thing I wanted to add here though was in regard to the social effects of a large-scale, 'payment for privacy' system. I understand that services need funding from somewhere in order to function, but if you're designing a system that rewards financial payments with private interactions (the realistic extent of this 'privacy' would be questionable, but I won't go into that here) then you're creating a community where those who have money to spend on social networking services are more able to control their privacy.<br><br>This creation of a two-class system of data privacy actually concerns me a lot. So you've either got a situation like <a href="http://app.net">app.net</a> (before it tried freemium options) where those who can't afford to sign up are unable to engage in the discussion at all, or a freemium model where those who <i>can't</i> afford to pay up front must pay through, what those who <i>want</i> to pay would deem, an unfair breach of their privacy. Social media usage informs a large part of our collective concern about privacy, and if we were to significantly reduce that for only a <i>particular</i> subset of the population (part of my research discusses how populations with money to spend on social media are often closely correlated with the subset of the population that is <i>least</i> at risk of privacy violations - but that's another discussion), then I see that introducing problems related to social inequality. (And victim blaming discourse when something goes bad - "If you didn't want your privacy breached, why didn't you pay the fees and keep your account financed?")<br></div><div><br></div><div>While talk of monetisation on social networking services usually assumes targeted advertising is the best (or only) way to go, there <i>are</i> alternatives to this. First of all, a service can still make money (Ello, for example, could possibly make enough) through anonymised advertising. Secondly, a service can ask for donations that give something extra to the user <i>other</i> than privacy - livejournal allowed more user icons, for example - or even just a simple 'thank you'. And lastly, if we go back a few years to one of the previous popular contenders for a 'facebook killer', diaspora shows us that it is actually possible for a server to run without users paying directly through money or indirectly through targeted advertising (depending on the server, ymmv). An added bonus of diaspora is that it's decentralised so you don't have to worry too much about the service dying (like <a href="http://app.net">app.net</a> seems to be doing) or rely on a centralised, often capitalist minded, entity controlling all decisions about the platform. I mean, diaspora is not perfect (slightly more technical expertise required to understand how to sign up and what it means to have different servers, for example), but in regard to a lot of the concerns people are currently having about Ello, I wonder if diaspora is (again) probably a better alternative.<br><br></div><div>Of course, the public consciousness if focused on Ello right now, so I don't think the current round of facebook dissent is going to have much of an impact on diaspora's userbase.<br><br></div><div>Andrew<br></div><div><a href="http://exhipigeonist.net">exhipigeonist.net</a><br></div></div></div></div>
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