I use Bluesky and Mastodon. Mastodon better hits where I want the fediverse to go but Bluesky is so much easier to use. Signup, UI, flagship app, feeds, and content is just so much less of a headache. But it feels like it’s a matter of time before it’s enshittified.
I was thinking about how much I hate big tech but there’s a lot of small and mid-size companies that I have neutral to positive views on. Canonical, Mozilla, 37 Signals, Odoo are the ones that come to mind. All of those have a revenue model but also actively support open source initiatives and developers. None are perfect but better than “big tech” and get more done than just donation based development.
It feels like there needs to be some for-profit companies (without ads and maintaining privacy) that can help support the development around ActivityPub and maintain apps and servers that are easier to onboard and easier to use. Does this exist?
What could be some non-evil revenue models? I pay $20/month for a blogging platform for my business website. Maybe have a service to host AP servers for businesses or journalists? Personal private encrypted cloud services like photo backups that are integrated with AP?
I’d say this is just like a nice e-mail provider that provides you with email and a bit of cloud storage and a place to sync your addressbook and calender for like $5 a month. We could do the same with social media and the Fediverse.
Does Flipboard fit this description? They are part of fedi already
Yes I think so. If they had an ad free versions I’d pay for it.
Regardless of the size of the sponsor, commercial sponsorship would be fine, as long as they don’t post ads or try to influence the content in any way.
Unfortunately, that’s a combination that likely will never happen. Imagine if Reddit never had ads or bowed down to corporate pressure. That’s not a viable business model for a capitalist organization.
I don’t even mind ads that much, for me it’s more about the algorithms that push certain agendas and are not open source (for ads and content alike)
That’s hard. I like an algorithm I can control. Maybe could do ads in search only. I don’t know. Kind of hate ads.
Id like to see non for profits hosting servers for their members. fandom conventions, maker spaces, etc. It would also make sense for them to host communities around what they do. scifi literature, games, 3d printing, etc.
Right, long term nothing is more important than retaining agency over their major methods of interaction with members and fostering vibrant online communities that feed into positive momentum.
You’ve nailed it. That’s they key bit that organizations of all kinds are going to figure out.
Non-profits only IMO. Pay folks what they deserve, all the rest goes back in.
Investors can’t go near it. They’re always the problem.
How do you decide “what they deserve”? What should be the payment for a moderator, or an instance admin? What of you have someone also making contributions to the software and as such is in a position to add features exclusive to one instance?
I mean we’ve determined what a living wage is, right? Is it really that difficult to think we can financially quantify people’s roles?
There are plenty of jobs similar to the roles that would be needed that we can compare to you. I was a freelancer for 15 years, I had to quantify jobs constantly. It’s not rocket science.
I also don’t think mods have to be paid. They can be, but I don’t see it as necessary. I’m talking about the instance maintainers.
I mean we’ve determined what a living wage is, right?
…have we?
Yes. It just hasn’t been properly implemented nation wide in the US. We’ve studied it to death and know what we need.
What does “implemented” mean?
If you’re going to waste my time with bullshit bait I’ll waste your time with lazy answers.
If you have a point to make just make it. Stop this ridiculous song and dance.
Buddy theres no song and dance unless it’s the one you’re doing where you’re refusing to answer basic questions about things you’ve said.
Is it really that difficult to think we can financially quantify people’s roles?
In a centrally-planned system? Yes, it is very hard.
I was a freelancer for 15 years, I had to quantify jobs constantly.
I assume you mean that you had to give a quote to a client?
If that is the case, your client has sole decision-making power and has “only” to evaluate whether the price you were asking for your labor is lower than the value you’d be bringing them.
How does this compare with a coop, where (presumably) the member-owners have all to agree on the price of labor? Are they going to accept to pay market rate for the people working there? Are they first find whoever is willing to work for the cheapest and then set the price on that?
Dude you’re acting like this is some Herculean feat when coops and non-profits and all sorts of structures exist for way more complex and difficult to quantify organizations. This is a very strange hill to die on.
coops and non-profits and all sorts of structures exist for way more complex and difficult to quantify organizations
The fact that they exist does not imply that they were ever able to serve their community/customers/users universally. You either get some people being served well at an inefficient overall cost, or you get everyone being served poorly by a broken system which can not afford to provide adequate resources to workers.
IOW, I’m not arguing that “coops” can not exist. What I am arguing is we will never get rid of Big Tech if we keep forcing the idea that only community-owned services are acceptable models of governance.
When it comes to hosting instances, yes, I do believe we have to universally keep investors/a for-profit structure out.
keep investors/a for-profit structure out.
Putting these two in the same bag is a mistake, this is what OP and I are saying.
Context and scale matters. Even though both small and big companies depend “on profit”, the methods they use and incentives that drive them are wildly different.
This is a great question and something we shouldn’t shy away from considering.
As far as hosting a mastodon instance? That’s something that should be done for free with the only income being donations.
These people do it because they want to. It’s not necessarily “work” for them, which is why they do it for free anyways. It’s also sustainable. As more users join their instance, costs for hosting will increase but so should donations. It’s not that expensive to host servers, despite what some conpeople and their useful idiots may have told you. (don’t assume you know the costs of hosting if you’ve never done it yourself.)
Admins get a lot of power that they have no problem abusing, either. This alone would make me a moron for even considering paying them for it.
“Yeah bro, I’m gonna pay you to host your instance where you have absolute control and can censor anything you don’t like.”
This is fun for them. That’s why they do it.
There is not a single Mastodon &server out there that have increased donations or reach a sustainable level after they reach a few thousand users.
Also, there are not enough admins around “doing it because they want to” if we want the Fediverse to grow a few millions users.
Instagram has 2 billion users, Pixelfed largest instance has less than 200k active users. We would have to get 10 THOUSAND admins in order to compete with Instagram.
There is not a single Mastodon &server out there that have increased donations or reach a sustainable level after they reach a few thousand users.
Are you referring to active users, or just accounts-made? If you’re referring to active users, then can you point to any Mastodon instance with thousands of active users and the donations they receive?
If you’re referring to accounts made, then you don’t really have a point because thousands of accounts are unlikely to substantially increase server costs unless they’re all active (see above).
Also, there are not enough admins around “doing it because they want to” if we want the Fediverse to grow a few millions users.
Are you joking? There’s no “shortage of instances” going around. As more people join the Fediverse, more admins will start instances. This is a non-issue.
In fact, I’d wager the vast majority of instance-owners are bored, twiddling their thumbs due to their lack of users.
Instagram has 2 billion users, Pixelfed largest instance has less than 200k active users. We would have to get 10 THOUSAND admins in order to compete with Instagram.
See above.
Newsie.social has (had) 20k active users, mostly professional journalists. It has been threatening to shut down due to lack of funding for two years already. Every month their admin needs to beg around for people to donate.
Fosstodon started with enough donations that they could even send some of their money to upstream projects. Nowadays they are invite-only because they don’t get enough funding to sustain infinite growth.
Moth.social was active while they were sponsored by Mozilla, they are shutting down in March 12th due to lack of funding.
I could go on.
There’s no “shortage of instances” going around. As more people join the Fediverse, more admins will start instances.
This is just wishful thinking. Go ahead and open an instance with open registration, see how long it will take for you to regret it.
the vast majority of instance-owners are bored, twiddling their thumbs due to their lack of users.
And there is a huge number of admins that got users and then burned out due to harassment, spam, entitled users asking for/against federation due to petty drama…
Newsie.social has (had) 20k active users, mostly professional journalists. It has in the brink of shutting down due to lack of funding for two years already.
Fosstodon started with enough donations that they could even send some of their money to upstream projects. Nowadays they are invite-only because they don’t get enough funding to sustain infinite growth.
Moth.social was active while they were sponsored by Mozilla, they are shutting down in March 12th due to lack of funding.
Can you provide any sources for where you’re getting this information? Did any of these instances share their server expenses and how much was being donated, or are we just supposed to “trust them bro”?
This is just wishful thinking. Go ahead and open an instance with open registration, see how long it will take for you to regret it.
Are you delusional? I’m not even going to entertain how stupid this response is.
And there is a huge number of admins that got users and then burned out due to harassment, spam, entitled users asking for/against federation due to petty drama…
And there’s a huge number that don’t and enjoy having power over the discourse, as evidence by how many of them do it.
I have to say, you’re pretty naive. It’s to be expected that you’re going to bat so hard for people trying to take money from you without verifying their expenses.
Newsie.social has (had) 20k active users, mostly professional journalists. It has in the brink of shutting down due to lack of funding for two years already.
Fosstodon started with enough donations that they could even send some of their money to upstream projects. Nowadays they are invite-only because they don’t get enough funding to sustain infinite growth.
Moth.social was active while they were sponsored by Mozilla, they are shutting down in March 12th due to lack of funding.
Can you provide any sources for where you’re getting this information? Did any of these instances share their server expenses and how much was being donated, or are we just supposed to “trust them bro”?
This is just wishful thinking. Go ahead and open an instance with open registration, see how long it will take for you to regret it.
Are you delusional? I’m not even going to entertain how stupid this response is.
And there is a huge number of admins that got users and then burned out due to harassment, spam, entitled users asking for/against federation due to petty drama…
And there’s a huge number that don’t and enjoy having power over the discourse, as evidenced by how many of them do it.
I have to say, you’re pretty
naiveinnocent to the world around you. It’s to be expected that you’re going to bat so hard for people trying to take money from you without verifying their expenses.*Apparently he reported my comment to have it censored for calling him “naive” rather than present arguments that show us that he’s not.
You could do a for profit without investors. Any profit goes back to employees and paying users. Make it the operating agreement from the get go and no one could come in.
Non profit in many places means you can’t sell a service. So you rely on donations. Which means you’re constantly asking for donations.
Leadership changes. Employees change.
Look at valve: when Gabe dies it could become an absolute shitshow for us. We cannot depend on generosity and benevolence. It has to be a non-profit to limit the potential damage and force transparency.
FIFA is a non-profit. Doesn’t exactly make them a good organisation.
Didn’t say being a mom-profit makes it good
Valve is a company with $BILLIONS in revenue per year. The problem is the size of the corporations, not the profit incentive.
I think we need more companies, but each of them smaller in headcount and customer base. For the Fediverse, this is perfect.
To illustrate the point: all I really want from Communick is to get to 10000 paying customers. That would bring $300k in revenue, I would be able to draw a good salary from it (still less than any drone from Big Tech makes though), make good on my pledge to give 20% of profits to developers, hire some people to help with moderation and so on…
Notice that 10 thousand users is less than 1% of the current amount of people in the Fediverse, if we had half of the users interested in this model, it would mean that there is room for (at least!) another 50 small businesses like mine, which is more than enough to have a healthy competition around.
Even non-profits aren’t immune to hostile takeovers. OpenAI is a for-profit company controlled by a non-profit, and that hasn’t stopped them from turning into something indistinguishable from a regular for-profit company. They’ve also been making noise about abandoning the fig leaf of the non-profit.
Mozilla is another one where nominally they’re a for-profit controlled by a non-profit, but they’re now getting into shoving ads in your face just like any other company.
It is harder to turn bad when you’re a non-profit but not impossible, without something of a poison pill that makes it unacceptable to for-profit takeovers.
Didn’t say they were immune.
I think there’s a difference in definitions, as well as difference between non-profit/not-for-profit and charities. As far as I know what your described is a non-profit and a non-profit can sell services.
I agree. Commercials get in, you get what happened to the Internet. We need something new.
Think beyond VC backed companies. Those get tons of attention because they need it.
Investors = bad. I whole heartedly agree.
For profit doesn’t have to be bad. What if it were a worker/user co-op. Have a free product and have a paid product. If you pay for the product you get a (just one) vote. If you work for the company you get a vote. Users won’t vote for maximizing profit. But the profit means you don’t have to beg for donations.
Craigslist would be another example. For profit but no major investors so doesn’t have to prioritize profits.
My home instance is starting to do some of this, it’s talked about a lot in https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/div0
What are they looking at doing for revenue?
People who support the server have greater voting rights; no revenue steam. But I think it would be cool to sell pirate plushies!
Unrelated: If you code it’s not hard to insert ads in between the comments on your own lemmy instance. It would be a cool experience but probably would create significant vitriol and site wide bannings by most, if not all, major instances for trying.
The problem for most monitization is psychological only ; many ideas would be an unwinnable uphill battle. Yes, can put ads in but also be a leper with zero traffic. You could probably put in perks if have good coding skills or can hire good skills; but if public relations done wrong then you are “poison to the community”.
You could try to do awards ( Reddit gold) but may get laughed off the platform. It’s a tough crowd
Ghost have their code open source and offer paid for hosting which is not unreasonable as you’d to pay to send bulk emails anyway even if you self-hosted (although there are free tiers from some providers if your only send a few hundred a month).
Non-Profits only. ANY for profit entries will be a poisoned pill at this stage.
Sadly the UX here sucks compared to for profit platforms like Bluesky, I don’t know of a good solution, but money is probably needed.
Open source projects aren’t doomed to lousy UX forever.
Shoves GNUImp behind a desk with a foot.
Just look at recent releases of Gnome and KDE. We can have nice things, it just takes time.
My own Communick offers managed hosting for things like Mastodon, Matrix, Lemmy, PixelFed, GoToSocial, Takahe for those that want to have their own server but do not want to deal with the hassle of managing it or worrying about security updates. I also offer paid accounts: $29/year gives you an account at all of our “flagship” instances: meaning you can get an account on Mastodon, Lemmy, Matrix and Funkwhale.
There are other providers like omg.lol (Mastodon account at social.lol and some other cool services for $20/year) and mastodon.green (accounts cost $1/month).
All of these servers are of course smaller and less popular than the ones that are open for registration, but unsurprisingly they are stable, well managed, free of drama and (AFAIK) never been linked to spammers or trolls. IOW, “you get what you pay for”.
Bluesky app is open source. I wonder if someone would try and replace the ATProtocol API endpoints with Mastodon ones.
Let’s look at email as a history example, google gobbled up everyone for gmail.
If fediverse goes the way of email where it infinitely will grow and compete for the most part eventually businesses offering instances as services will be the norm, we can just jump ahead and try to it right before big tech starts to gobble it up.
Businesses already offer that like elestio
Elastio seems to be a devops platform as opposed to a standalone “buy my service to get a feature rich access to the fediverse or mastodon or peertube specifically, whatever” service like the typical email service providers nowadays
To add to the initial comment, the reason why we would want this is the same reason why we should be donating to instance admins, it only gets more competitive and more work involved the bigger the fediverse gets and the more competitive it gets with offering unique experiences
Non-profits is what we need here.
Fediverse is open source and decentralized, so any for-profit model could leverage it without asking for anyone’s permission. There are already for-profit companies that build and maintain apps to access Fediverse platforms. Meta Threads and Tumblr are both integrating into ActivityPub as their own hosts. I imagine in a future where Fediverse grows rampantly, the hosts with the best overall user experience will be for-profit. We live in a world of global capitalism, good things cost money most of the time.
good things cost money most of the time.
I’ve found it’s the exact opposite: the best things in life are free.
It’s actually built-in to your argument. None of this would be possible without free protocols that are accessible to everyone.
Protocols can be developed and then shared without cost except for the upfront development costs. Hosting a continuous service requires regular income, meaning for profit models will always out-resource non-profit models of hosting. Especially if a platform is looking at hosting more than just text and compressed images. Why do you think Pixelfed’s main host only allows uploads of up to 15MB?
I think supporter badges would be a good monetization model for each instance. ActivityPub could allow for an arbitrary “badge” field (to my knowledge it doesn’t currently have anything like this but I also haven’t read the spec), and each server could fill it in however it likes. Other servers/users could limit displaying them if they get abused, à la pig poop balls on hexbear (or whatever it’s moved on to being called now).
