this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2025
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Fediverse

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

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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?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Does Flipboard fit this description? They are part of fedi already

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago

Yes I think so. If they had an ad free versions I’d pay for it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (13 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

I agree. Commercials get in, you get what happened to the Internet. We need something new.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I mean we’ve determined what a living wage is, right?

...have we?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Yes. It just hasn’t been properly implemented nation wide in the US. We’ve studied it to death and know what we need.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

What does "implemented" mean?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

Dude my point is simple. The concept of a living wage is well established and defined. Including how it can be calculated. There are countless studies and reports and estimates to the point where we could easily establish it as a minimum wage at the very least at the municipal and state levels depending on income needs to “live.”

This is not complicated. It’s a decades old, well established concept. Unfortunately it has not been implemented in to law in the US in any meaningful way beyond a handful of cities and states. I don’t Know if you were just playing dense or truly do not understand the concept, but there you go. Use fucking Google I don’t care. I don’t need to defend the existence of this concept and how thoroughly researched and thought out it already is.

Are you going to actually respond substantively or are you going to keep up your lame song and dance? Make your fucking point. What are you trying to say?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I don't know why you're treating me like a piece of shit for nothing more than trying to understand more about the words you wrote but I suppose I'll stop doing that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

Cue the pearl clutching and jaqassery.

You open with a sarcastic comment, ask me what the meaning of the word “implemented” is, and then act like you’ve just been sweet and asking innocent questions? You’ll have to excuse me if I’m a little incredulous.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago

Now you're trying too hard

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

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?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (13 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 days ago (13 children)

Non profit coops. It need to be people owned.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 days ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

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.

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