2y ago

How do people feel about donating to the server?

How do people feel about donating to keep things running smoothly and making sure there are adequate resources and compensation for those involved in running .world instance?

I'm curious as I think this kind of rapid growth will be the first time the model is really being tested - as in, large rapid growth in users and activity resulting in sudden higher running costs.

I feel transparent engagement would be good to understand what the current costs are, how that scales and how people involved in keeping things running are fairly compensated for their time and effort.

Also having an issue tracker, roapmap etc public and real engagement let people see who and what they are investing in.

It's an awesome job to see the server still standing after such a huge influx!

51 comments

Since "Web2.0" or rather, the VC backed tech businesses that ran on potential value rather than realized value over the past decade seem to be dying out this year, I think the new model of internet we're heading towards will involve users understanding the costs to run a server (both literal costs and labor costs) and paying their fair share. I think this model is much cheaper for everyone though because it doesn't involve corporate greed. These new companies won't be on the stock market trying to turn into profit machines. And we don't need a huge staff producing unnecessary new features - that's the beauty of open source tech. We're all working on making those new features together as a gift to everyone. But the server costs are there and donations will be needed at an affordable price. The more generous donors will fill the cost gaps that those without the financial means to pay leave. But yeah, everyone who can afford to should help pay a portion of the monthly costs to their admins. At the same time, admins should be nakedly transparent about what those costs are and any shady attempts to make an extra buck by not being transparent should be met with users moving to different servers.
- Very much agree - and potentially a new concept for a lot of people, which is why I thought this was an interesting question!
- I agree that it’s needed, and I plan on supporting my instance (although as of right now he has made it sound like there’s plenty of donations coming in), but I’m skeptical that the average person will chip in. I couldn’t even get my family to chip in on our shared {streaming service} subscription before they got kicked off it for not being in my household.
  
  Oh yeah, this will undoubtedly end up being a fraction of us. As long as it pays the bills it's enough. I'm sure the admins will sound the alarms if they're falling short on funding needs.

I would be happy to donate, however I would like to be differentiated from users who haven’t donated. Maybe with a status symbol, some thing like a blue checkmark beside my name perhaps?
- I'm almost too afraid to ask, is this intentional irony?
  
  yes, one of the .world donations tiers ($8) specifically says that you will be allowed to put a blue check mark next to your name, but also that you’re already allowed to do that lol
  
  Poe's law - without a clear indicator of the author's intent, any parodic or sarcastic expression of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of those views.
- On that note, I think a post view limit would be good too. Maybe 10 posts a day for accounts who haven't donated and 100 for those who have?
  
  sounds like twitter to me
- I've seen the idea of a "reddit gold" being thrown around - eg you pay to get a post or comment a different color or effect and the money goes to the instance admins
  
  As long as it doesn't boost the comment in any way. Paying to make a comment more visible doesn't sit well with me.
  
  I think that awards would be cool. People on Reddit seemed to really liked it.
- Nah, I don’t care. I don’t wear a gold star to basketball when I sweep the court, bring the pennies, or we use my ball - it’s part of being able to play.
  Could I stand up my own instance? Yes. Do I want that headache? Fuck no. I’ll chip in any time my instances think they’ll need the cash. It’s what a community does.
  Oh and, for the record, Fuck Spez. I’m never giving that money grubbing removed a single cent.
  
  I was being completely sarcastic.
  Fuck u/Spez
- Calckey has that. And so do other Fediverse alternatives.
  It'd be nice to have some flair or a shiny object to showcase contributions to the funding effort. And something really simple would be excellent.

I already do… https://opencollective.com/mastodonworld
- This! They provide estimates of the cost as well as current income so you get a sense of how bad/gold off they are. Just donated this morning.
  
  I set up via Patreon which doesn't have those details - that's awesome!
  I wonder if the Patreon income is accounted for in this somewhere?

I already cancelled my Reddit Premium and joined the Lemmy.world Patreon. 👍

I already do, and towards the overall cost of Lemmy development. I'd much prefer to kick in a bit of money each month and get something ad free, open source, etc than the alternatives

I'm much more inclined to donate to things I use and aren't owned by a big company and/or sells ad space. It's like giving $5 to a friend and not a group of people who don't actually need $5.

Common courtesies are expected and not discussed -- donating is perfectly fine and you definitely should.

Seems logical, honestly. I never gave the other couple of social medias I used money, nor did I allow their ads. Kbin is some place I'd prefer supporting financially as I spend my time on it.

I'm donating to every fedi instance I'm active on. A few dollars a month goes a long way, and I'm lucky enough to finally be in a position where I won't miss it in my bank account.

I will have no problem throwing money their way. I'm not stingy when it comes to a service I use. Especially when it's done out of passion, and those involved are dumping their free time and personal income into it, without expected returns. Anything FOSS falls into that category. I donate to my Torrent site, my Linux Distro's developers, etc. Someday, when I win the Lottery, I'll drop them all bags of money. Until then, I'll throw you guys (lemmy.world) what I can...

Everybody should do as they please. Supporting the server is nice but only if you are able to.

I'm already giving monthly through the Patreon for Lemmy.world / Mastodon.world. So, I'm fairly comfortable!
- Signup link?
  
  Ah!
  You have two options:
  Patreon
  OpenCollective
  I go through Patreon, as I also contribute to a local news site and to the Mastodon developer team (... and so I can snoop in their Discord, which is Patreon only). I believe there is a preference for OpenCollective as a platform of choice.

I currently have no plans to donate. Thank you to the rest who do!

I’m happy to do so. But I would like to see better server performance though. I’m not to big on paying for promises as its too easy to get burned.

I pledged 5 or 10$a month (can't remember, does it matter?)I went off the Apollo creators math for what Reddit wanted to charge him per user. By his math that was 30x the monthly value of a user, so I'm happy paying for myself and 29 other randomly lemmings.

I’m contributing monthly to both lemmy.world and wefwef. I am fortunate to be able to do so, and I want to help them be successful during this critical growth time.
- Agreed. While I run my own instance it’s essentially private. I still donate to lemmy.world as it’s where I pull the most content from.

I already signed up for the $5/month Patreon for lemmy.world and I would happily do more if Lemmy really takes off. I have no issue paying a nominal amount of money to support a community that I'm part of.

I happily am donating on patreon. Throwing in a few bucks for something I plan to use frequently is not a problem. Long live lemmy world.

Kinda feel like know only do the instances (like lemmy.world) need to get some decent funding, but also the devs.
The instances need to pay for hardware or hosting, plus maybe admin work (obviously people will do it for love but cash is nice too), but as a fairly fledgling platform, there's also going to be some serious dev work needed to fix bugs, close exploits, improve efficiencies, and add features. Even the best host can be dead in the water if the underlying software has an unfixed exploit or lacks the features needed to maintain/optimize it. It's one of the reasons people flocked to 3rd-party Reddit clients, after all (because Reddit themselves couldn't be arsed to build up the tools themselves).

I'm happy to donate to a good cause!

Eventually we'll start seeing ads. Hopefully the non scummy type. I think the ad revenue will be too big to ignore.

https://join-lemmy.org/donate
- That's the link to donate to the authors of the Lemmy software. To donate towards the expenses of the lemmy.world server however, which is different, it is https://opencollective.com/mastodonworld or https://patreon.com/mastodonworld (both of which you can find on the sidebar of the main feed).
  
  My bad, thank you!

I gave $25 on buymeacoffee, it was the least I could do. Never paid for social media otherwise. A patreon would be great, but that might be a headache as you scale.

I would donate a few bucks a month!

I already set a recurring donation, see the opencollective link that lemmy.world put on the sidebar of the main feed (you can also find the details about the expenses there). Just consider it like paying for Reddit Premium, except here the money goes directly into server expenses instead of being burnt in nonsense like NFTs or paying devs to add more trackers in the official app.

51 comments