We will need small and independent commercial providers for the Fediverse.

  • Astrovenator@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    1 year ago

    It’s a valid point. We can’t expect to be free of corporations and also expect people to maintain servers for free. Running a service costs someone somewhere, and running a massive service can’t easily work relying on just donations. I’d be happy to pay a small monthly/yearly fee to a nonprofit to guarantee an independent server, rather than to be a product to be traded.

    • Barbarian@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      1 year ago

      Why can’t it rely on donations? People poo-poo this, but I’ve yet to hear a substantive reason as to why.

      • rglullis@communick.newsOP
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Show me any donation-based instance on Mastodon that is able to pay (market-rate) for the labor of the moderators, admins and developers.

        • Barbarian@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Is that an apples-to-apples comparison though? To me, that sounds like “Show me a soup kitchen that’s able to pay market rate for chefs”.

          Also, by that logic, Reddit is a failure. They don’t pay mods either.

          • rglullis@communick.newsOP
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            Ok. Fair enough, moderators usually are also part of the community, so they akso have the incentive to keep it going well even if unpaid.

            Yet, the point stands. Remove “moderators” from the previous comment. Show me any donation-based instance on Mastodon that is able to pay (market-rate) for the labor of admins and developers.

              • rglullis@communick.newsOP
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                That money is to cover everything: servers, designers, developers. Eugen gets maybe 10% of that money. A developer making $3k/month (without any employment benefits) is something completely unthinkable. People can make more money than that by just being able to spell Javascript.

                • Barbarian@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  It’s not unusual for employees of charitable non-profits to earn less than their for-profit counterparts. Again, I refer back to my soup analogy.

                  Also, digging around, I found out that patreon is not the only source of fund-raising and that they have received a 50,000 EUR bug bounty grant.

          • rglullis@communick.newsOP
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            sounds like “ Show me a soup kitchen that’s able to pay market rate for chefs”.

            What would happen if the masses realized how fast food is bad for them and stopped eating at McDonalds? Would they go to eat on a soup kitchen, or would they be expected to buy/grow their own food?

    • Laconic@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Exactly. Non profit. I don’t recall seeing that in this article. I don’t think it matters what the business model is. If your social media is a for profit company their interests aren’t the same interests as the user.