this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2025
542 points (98.0% liked)

Fediverse

32349 readers
585 users here now

A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).

If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to [email protected]!

Rules

Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration)

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
542
The admin of the third largest Mastodon instance (16k monthly active users) is asking for help to pay rent (mstdn.social)
submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
149 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Please, tell me how "paying for hardware costs is enough"...

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I do support admins

Again, paying out to cover hardware costs is not the same as supporting the admins.

Now do I think Lemmy admins should be able to make a living out of managing an instance? Based on what we see (...) it seems unrealistic.

Holy $%&! what a contortionist way to avoid the response! You are sounding like a Monty Python comedy sketch.

I'm not asking what you think is "realistic". I'm asking whether you think admins should be compensated for their work.

Should I try again, or can I just assume that your answer is "no, I do not think that admins need to be compensated for their work." ?

Sorry to tell you, but you’re here with the crabs.

Speak for yourself, then. But at least you are starting to show some honesty and admitting that you rather pull people down to your level instead of acknowledge the value of the work done by admins and developers.

If you can’t see the difference between employees of companies providing millions to stakeholders and 50k monthly active users

You are getting at this exactly backwards.

It's not the employees of tech companies who complain about poor pay. Quite the opposite.

And the reason that Lemmy can not grow past 50k users is because the Fediverse is stuck on a horrible culture where they refuse to even acknowledge that the work of admins and developers is valuable, so those with the skills that could take the Fediverse to the next level are not going to be sacrificing themselves to serve a bunch of people who think they are entitled to free work from others just because they themselves are not able to do it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Again, paying out to cover hardware costs is not the same as supporting the admins.

That's your opinion. Do you really believe that if admins were unhappy with the current situation, they would keep "working for free" instead of shutting down the instances and moving on with their lives? What is stopping an admin unwilling to "give away their labor for free" from doing so?

I’m not asking what you think is “realistic”. I’m asking whether you think admins should be compensated for their work.

The realism is the part you are missing? Do I think that everyone here should be paid for their work? Yes, of course. Sysadmins, developers, moderators, Fediverse advocates, active posters, even commenters deserve something, as every of those roles make the platform alive.

And you know that well as you are usually complaining no one posts on your communities or instances.

But stating that doesn't bring us anywhere. Where is this money we supposedly all deserve going to come from? Nowhere, because there is none. Or actually there is, but just enough to cover the server costs.

acknowledge the value of the work done by admins and developers.

Do you see the Photon, Voyager, Mbin, Piefed developers going around like you treating the whole platform as crabs? Of all of the instance admins, you're the only one having this discourse.

It’s not the employees of tech companies who complain about poor pay. Quite the opposite.

How much money can a 50k community can provide?

And the reason that Lemmy can not grow past 50k users is because the Fediverse is stuck on a horrible culture where they refuse to even acknowledge that the work of admins and developers is valuable, so those with the skills that could take the Fediverse to the next level are not going to be sacrificing themselves to serve a bunch of people who think they are entitled to free work from others just because they themselves are not able to do it.

If the Fediverse is such a horrible culture, why are you still here? Why don't you just create a startup, get some venture capital investments, create your superior social media platform, and then share it with us?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

What is stopping an admin unwilling to "give away their labor for free" from doing so?

Again, you are going at this backwards.

Instead of asking yourself why the network can reach a few million users even when admins are unpaid, you should be wondering how much bigger the network would be if the current users appropriately invested in the ecosystem.

Yes, of course. Sysadmins, developers, moderators, Fediverse advocates, active posters, even commenters deserve something, as every of those roles make the platform alive.

Amazing. By equating the value of the work provided by admins and developers (which you can not do) to the work of "Fediverse advocates and active posters" (which you want to do) you create a false equivalence that you think excuses you from giving full credit to others.

You said you did not respond to the original statements because "it would take too much time". Now, you spent more time trying to find a reasonable justification for your unwillingness to acknowledge the higher value of someone else's contribution and you still didn't give a straight out answer and resort to rhetorical tricks.

Where is this money we supposedly all deserve going to come from?

First: who is "we", here? Are you really implying that you should be getting money by participating?

Second: the money exists. You and many others can pay $10-20 / year for the service being provided to you. The problem is that you (and many others) do not want to acknowledge the value of the work and refuse to contribute beyond "covering the cost of hardware".

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Actually, you're right, I don't have time for this. People will read this conversation and make their own minds.

Rhetorical tricks

I did make my position clear many times, you just don't want to understand it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah, you made it clear that you:

  • do not value the work of the admins
  • can only see meaning in a "free" social media platform if it means "free of charge"
  • think that a small business provider providing hosting for open source systems is as bad as Big Tech/Corporate/VC funded ones
  • see volunteered work as as opportunity to excuse yourself from giving a meaningful contribution
  • think you should be paid for participating
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You made clear that you

  • only use the Fediverse as a way to create a business for yourself
  • don't care about this platform with its horrible crab mentality
  • think that a 50k community has enough resources to sustain the full time salaries of dozens of developers and sysadmins
  • discredit community building while you complain that people don't come to your communities or instances
  • think that community moderation and building doesn't add value to the platform

Two can play that game

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)
  • the fact that you think that "creating a business" is bad says more about you than me. And I don't want a business "just for me". I am looking for a sustainable way where many people can work in tech and create technology that does not exploit the users, but this will never happen if the people working are expected to do it from free and still figure out how to make rent.
  • not quite, see above. I don't particularly care about the individuals and I certainly wish to change the prevailing culture. I am not here to have any significant impact on people individually and I am not concerned about "being nice". I do care about finding one platform that can be sustainable and universally accessible, though.
  • no, but I think that the LW users do have the resources to allow Ruud to work full-time on Fediverse stuff, but for some reason there are 18k users there who think it is okay to exploit his free labor.
  • pick a lane: do you think that "community building" is a job, or not? Are you participating here as a service to others or do you out of personal enjoyment? If you want to be paid for it, then state your value and tell me how much you think your work is worth.
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Not worth it, we had that conversation several times already