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Aurynn Shaw

so, planning on spinning up an instance for small businesses in Aotearoa New Zealand.

It'll be paid, like Cloud Island, and use the Cloud Island tech stack, and use a subscribed blocklist.

I'll be admin and moderator of this instance.

Are you/your company interested in being on this instance? DM me if you are, or email me at aurynn@eiara.nz.

Boosting this would be helpful.

An important part of this is going to be that:

- I will be administering this instance
- Any business that gets an account will get significant onboarding as to what is appropriate behaviour on the Fediverse.

- I will be curating what businesses are allowed. For example, I won't be allowing cryptocurrency (they're all scams), woo, and other businesses TBD.

- This will be small businesses only.

- The goal is so that small businesses can interact with their fans and community.

This is going to require me to do a LOT of writing, specifically of:

a) how to be a good fedizen
b) what behaviours are going to end badly for you
c) no, you don't get to chase engagement, stop that

Once I get a draft of this document together I'm going to very nicely ask my admin peers to review it and provide feedback.

I want to make sure we can welcome businesses to the fedi in a way that's different to birdsite and adds to the culture here.

If businesses behave here like they did on birdsite it's not going to work, no one benefits.

I want to do better than that.

Part of this is I want to be able to explore alternative funding models for social networking. Advertising-based models are Very Bad and we need to do better.

@aurynn given this is self promotion I’m assuming this toot has permission to be shared?

@aethylred Depends on the take of your mod team. @explorergrace@mastodon.nz ?

@aurynn@cloudisland.nz interested to see how this pans out cause I know plenty of communities on here that practice blocking business accounts and fediblocking their instances.

@ash Well, as Cloud Island is a good fedizen and I seem to be respected, a part of this offering will be a lot of onboarding of businesses and curation of what businesses can join, specifically so that we *don't* pollute the fedi

@aurynn @ash this looks like something that could be useful for places like car repair garages, skilled tradespersons etc who would't indulge in spam/aggressive marketing (as they can get plenty of work without it, and folk who /aren't/ in Aotearoa / NZ aren't going to travel there for something like a replacement tyre) - as these small businesses otherwise all end up dependent on Facebook...

@vfrmedia @ash I would like to help these businesses become less reliant on Facebook et al, yes

@aurynn This sounds like a really interesting & possibly even great idea!

I've been pondering how we'd comfortably get our little law firm onto the Fediverse at some point, and I think something like you're offering (but for where we are rather than NZ, ofc) is what I'm thinking would be what we'd want.

@krisnelson I think it's a vital service for the fediverse. Especially the onboarding part, since right now the reaction of most admins and mods is "defed", for good reason

@aurynn I don't know if it matters for your particular instantiation of the idea, but it seems to me that the instance, if properly run (as you describe), could also serve the purpose of verifying/validating that these are "official" accounts of that particular business (I mean this less in a technical sense and more in the social sense, if that makes sense). Seems to me your careful onboarding might well accomplish or help with that kind of trust, too?

@krisnelson @aurynn The only guaranteed way of knowing a company is official is for it to use it's own domain name. An onboarding consultant is still a good idea for the other stated reasons.

@mike @krisnelson Given I'll be charging money and making judgements personally, I'll be attesting to the validation.

Larger orgs will be upsold to the "own domain" tiers

@aurynn This sounds like a great idea (and a veritable truckload of work, but hopefully, if it takes off, you'll find a couple of trustworthy sub-admins to help with the load). I hope it succeeds - because if it does, that can show an option to other groups who would like to reach friends or colleagues here but don't quite fit into the existing instances' ethos.

@Daveosaurus it will be a lot of work, but if it takes off then it’ll be worth it 🙂

@aurynn Sounds like a really good idea. Would be good idea in other places too.

@cenobyte I may expand but first version is NZ.

@creatinglake advertising is, in general, bad

@aurynn Facebook and Twitter's model has certainly been bad for society.

@creatinglake and letting even a hint of it take root here would be a failure

@aurynn are you thinking of local NZ businesses sponsoring an instance, be it for their customers, fans, or communities where they have a presence? No in-stream “ads” but the instance domain and name are clearly sponsored.

I keep wondering about that, but can’t decide which American or multinational brands would take on the moderation risk. Gaming companies perhaps? Or sports?

@andrew I'm going to charge for accounts on the instance. If larger orgs want an account, I'll upsell them on running their own instance

@aurynn ahh. I see that now that I read back. Makes sense.

@aurynn I love this - following you with great interest.

I love how the Ravelry web site developed their advertising model. Ads on nearly every page - but not in the way of the content you wanted. Topical and almost all small businesses only,. Targeted to who the advertiser wanted to connect with, but up to the users to actively scroll to them, see if they were interesting, and click through.

@Johannab I am very anti-advertising, and I want to explore sustainability of services online without needing to lean on ads.

@aurynn Oh, sorry - wasn't suggesting it as a cookie-cutter model, so much as mentioning - I'm very interested in seeing pro-social ways for business & services to participate online. I mean, there have been a few on Twitter - those ones who are there to actually engage and dialogue rather than buy promoted tweets. Rav did it differently, but also successfully (Advertisers essentially had to be members of the site, offering what the community wanted, and engaging).

@aurynn Would be only too happy to read when you’re at the point of sharing.

@aurynn I love this idea, would definitely use an .au equivalent!

@jpm check out fediverse.au