Some people argue that we shouldn't define the fediverse in terms of which protocols the different platforms use, or whether they support ActivityPub specifically.
Fair enough. How about, can the fediverse have ads?
@stefan I see plenty of spam on here.
I know there are people who say this place is great because they never see spam, and maybe that’s the case, AND admittedly I don’t see it every single day, but I do see it in my feeds here, so I know it is here.
And recently there were stories about having to block instances that were spamming a lot, so again, that just goes to show that there is spam on here.
So this isn’t theoretical. It’s here.
@volkris Right, yes, spam is definitely an issue.
I'd personally distinguish that from paid promotional posts, but I can see how the line gets easily blurred sometimes.
@stefan aaaah I see, I think you were probably asking about instances inserting paid promotional posts instead of just run of the mill spam.
Although, gosh, that really does blur a line when an instance can not only show paid promotional posts to its own users but also broadcast them to other instances.
I remain critical of the design of ActivityPub with its focus on instances over users whenever a topic like this comes up. I thought about it for a second, and gosh, it’s the same problem all over again.
@volkris Would you care to elaborate?