@asklemmy@lemmy.world @asklemmy@lemmy.ml @ask Is it possible to create something like Meta ads purely based on floss platforms and products ?
@asklemmy@lemmy.world @asklemmy@lemmy.ml @ask Is it possible to create something like Meta ads purely based on floss platforms and products ?
You are asking for advertising organized on a massive scale, backed by targeting algorithms/infrastructure that cost billions to develop and run.
If you develop that from FOSS, you get… Meta, all over again.
Beside, much of Meta’s advertising advantage is from popularity, inertia, being “the default” or whatever you want to call it, so I don’t think making a viable alternative is really possible unless that project becomes another Meta. The only way to get there is engagement by-any-means.
I am not trying to be combative or anything, but I’m struggling to understand what you’re envisioning here. In other words, what would FOSS even bring? Why make it FOSS at all? Is the idea simply for Meta to have a competitor that’s otherwise very similar?
@brucethemoose not Meta. I’m not a competitor for Meta. I want people to be free of Meta.
@brucethemoose not advertising on a massive scale. Suppose l have a product or a service. Meta ad is such a system that you can create a nice information piece for yourself, which you can share with others. I want something similar. But devoid of Meta !!
In Meta, you need a facebook account. But here, the platform which facilitates such ads itself creates the account. And the ad can be shared via URL. In other words, people don’t need to approach any ad agency to create their own ad.
I think you are asking for two different things. Or maybe one impossible combination of things.
You want to network a (presumably paid) product or service to people. You want to “create a nice information piece for yourself,” and for that to be shown to other users to promote your service.
…And you can already do this on the Fediverse. Or HackerNews. Or wherever.
If you have a nice product/service, post it in the appropriate community/network, and it will take off! It will get exposed to users, it will get shared/reposted and you will get engagement. If it doesn’t, that’s because Fediverse users chose not to engage or boost it. That’s how FOSS and community works: with user consent, and little engagement manipulation.
But that is not what Meta provides.
Meta provides an ad network, and you pay them to boost engagement. Meta provides a service to boost the attention of your product/service beyond what it would achieve “organically,” and laser target it to users who are most likely to engage with it.
You cannot replicate that without replicating most of Meta. And you certainly can’t try and even hope to compete with MEta.
So if you are unhappy with the way promotion on the Fediverse and similar platform… well, that’s the tradeoff. And I still do not understand your proposal to replicate that without essentially replicating an Meta-like ad service. You can’t follow FOSS, communal principles and pay to boost engagement artifically like that.
@brucethemoose Thanks for your reply. I’m not a user of any Meta product except whatsapp. True, all posts made on fediverse are easily shareable and accessible even to non-fediverse users. Fediverse has a very strong channel to reach out to any internet user.
Now I see why Meta ads are so effective. Meta takes it across to people and forces it upon them.
Indeed.
I probably should have just said that, heh. It’s quite a sprawling system, but it basically boils down to that. And FOSS doesn’t really work with ‘trapped participants’ like Meta’s system does.