I’ve been talking to many people about the controversy with Reddit, why I left it and why I went onto Lemmy, Kbin and Mastadon instead. Some of my friends have commented that the control is still a problem as other platforms and it is all dependent on who owns the software, who owns the hardware, who are the admins, who are the moderators and which community or group has the most influence.
Who are these people that influence the most control on the fediverse? Are they Conservative? Are they Liberal? Are they Republican? Are they Democrat? Do they lean to the left of politics? to the right? or are they center? Are they even political? But also if they had to be would they easily or not so easily influenced?
So … for the ELI5 version of the question … Who owns the fediverse?
Which leads to the question … what if the owner no longer has any money to pay $20 / month … what if his instance grows popular and now he has to pay $40/month $100/month $500/month … I can appreciate the goodwill of people but whenever anyone puts lots of energy into any activity, eventually it costs money, time and effort … all of which does not come for free and usually comes with a price
These are all good questions and lead you to explore more about what it means to run software.
So as well as the instance (domain name / hardware server) admins, there are also the open source developers of the Lemmy software. They keep things updated and put out new features and releases. They currently have a (partial) grant from some European agencies who are making sure that open source software isn’t all built and owned by American corporations.
It would be good for every instance to allocate some funding to the open source software they rely on.
I’m one of the people responsible for (currently a test Lemmy instance) news.cosocial.ca. Our main service today is our Mastodon server (cosocial.ca). We are a registered member-owned Canadian cooperative. Every member has paid at least $50 per year. We currently have volunteer moderators and server admins, our goal is to eventually pay those roles. More on our blog.
We’re also here to be a resource to anyone running services in Canada, especially if you need legal or other help. /me waves at smorks
Back to keeping things running: the Lemmy software needs a bunch more features to scale. The moderation tools are very basic, there are a couple of mobile apps in development that are very early on. We should think about pooling funds and donating.
It’s great to see Lemmy.ca on OpenCollective (we use it for Cosocial too). I’ve just donated as a $5 monthly backer. Thanks for setting this up!
Everybody is different, but I’d suggest subscribing as a backer or just tossing in a one time donation to start to support @[email protected] and Lemmy.ca.
thank you Boris! i’ve sent you a long PM to your matrix account.
Hi Smorks! I used LibrePay. Is Open Collective the preferred platform? If so, I will switch going forward. :)
thank you! i don’t currently have a preferred platform, i know that liberapay doesn’t take any cut of the donations.
Great to know. 😺
Great to see this and come along for the ride! Dang it. I realize now that I used LibrePay to donate. Is Open Collective the preferred method?
I mean, this was a very real issue for every random forum site back before the internet became consolidated. In some cases people would donate to keep the servers running, in other cases the ownership gets passed on to someone that could keep servers running. At least things are way cheaper to keep running nowadays.
Yup or just websites in general until everyone wanted to move to FB…
You can run a instance just for yourself and your friends. Nothing forces you to open it publicly.
I would assume this whole instance would go be snapped away…im assuming it gets federated to other instances so if this server does die there is a back, but not 100% sure. earnest the owner is taking coffee donations if you want to support. Currently hes paying 100eruos not sure per month or year…
I see Smorks has answered your question but just to follow on from what @Hotzilla said, the great thing about the software being open source is that it’s totally possible for any group, for example an Indigenous arts collective, to run their own self-funded instance for their members, which can still inteact with others in the fediverse.
that is a neat idea … but I am like most internet users and social media users … I don’t have time to do these things or organize them … I will participate in many of these activities, but I have neither the time, resources, skill or money to take part in them … I’ll support those who are capable and do support the same communities and perspectives I like … but the question always concerns me
->who owns/pays for/manages/maintains the service I am using
To be clear, I am not saying to you, “you must do this yourself”.
I am only saying, the source code of these platforms are resources that anyone can use.
There will be many different ways of owning/paying/maintaining. There will be many kaupapa (purpose and process), some you will agree with and some you won’t.
But, spread the word that the resources are here for us all. You and I might not have the energy but we probably know groups who would.
You are in Canada on lemmy.ca and helping to support smorks, I am in Aotearoa reading your words through kbin.social and I donate to kbin’s dev, Ernest. It’s wonderful that we can have this conversation across platforms like this. I think great things will happen.
I guess to put the question back to you, what would motivate you to pay $5/month or $50/year to support LemmyCa?
You’re also talking to people who also think it’s an important question. My answer is “I think we should all pay for it”.
What would motivate me is in understanding and knowing who the instance owner is and what kind of person they might be and what kind of instance they would like to run … and all of it explained and presented to me as clearly and openly as possible.
The instance owner of lemmy.ca … @smorks … answered many of my questions today which motivated me to go ahead and sign up for a $5 a month contribution
I agree with you … we should all pay for it, even if it is a small amount of a dollar a month … across thousands of users, it would make a huge difference. If no one pays for it or not enough people pay for it … money, greed, desperation, economy and finance will always creep in to corrupt what an instance owner will or won’t do.