Hello world,
as many of you probably already know, Lemmy is an open source project and its development is funded by donations.
Unfortunately, as is often the case, donations amounts are often going down over time if people are not aware of their necessity. When older users leave the platform they may stop donating, while new users joining will typically not be aware of this and won’t start donating to even things out or even go towards an overall increase in donations.
All of the services provided by our non-profit Fedihosting Foundation are dependent on the development of FOSS platforms, which we can host without paying any licensing or other fees, instead only being required to pay for the infrastructure cost. We are currently investing a small part (€50 each) of the donations we receive in development of Lemmy and Mastodon, but the majority of the donations we receive are used for covering infrastructure costs. We’re currently just about breaking even with the donations we receive, but it’s certainly not enough to cover a large part of Lemmy or other software development costs.
We’re looking to support sustainable software development for all the services we provide and will post similar announcements on our other platforms to promote donations towards the respective development teams in the coming days.
You can find the original announcement by @nutomic@lemmy.ml below:
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/29579005
An open source project the size of Lemmy needs constant work to manage the project, implement new features and fix bugs. Dessalines and I work full-time on these tasks and more. As there is no advertising or tracking, all of our work is funded through donations. Unfortunately the amount of donations has decreased to only 2000€ per month. This leaves only 1000€ per developer, which is not enough to pay my bills. With the current level of donations I will be forced to find another job, and drastically reduce my contributions to Lemmy. To avoid this outcome and keep Lemmy growing, I ask you to please make a recurring donation:
Liberapay | Ko-fi | Patreon | OpenCollective | Crypto
If you want more information before donating, consider the comparison with Reddit. It began as startup funded by rich investors. The site is managed by corporate executives who over time have become more and more disconnected from normal users. Their main goal is to make investors happy and to make a profit. This leads to user-hostile decisions like firing the employee responsible for AMAs, blocking third-party apps and more. As Reddit is a single website under a single authority, it means all users need to follow the same rules, including ridiculous ones like censoring the name “Luigi”.
Lemmy represents a new type of social media which is the complete opposite of Reddit. It is split across many different websites, each with its own rules, and managed by normal people who actually care about the users. There is no company and no profit motive. Much of the work is carried out by volunteer admins, mods and posters, who contribute out of enthusiasm and not for money. For users this is great as there is no advertising nor tracking, and no chance of takeover by a billionaire. Additionally there are no builtin political or ideological restrictions. You can use the software for any purpose you like, add your own restrictions or scrutinize its inner workings. Lemmy truly belongs to everyone.
Dessalines and I work fulltime on Lemmy to keep up with all the feature requests, bug reports and development work. Even so there is barely enough time in the day, and no time for a second job. Previously I sometimes had to rely on my personal savings to keep developing Lemmy for you, but that can’t go on forever. We partly rely on NLnet for funding, but they only pay for development of new features, and not for mandatory maintenance work. The only available option are user donations. To keep it viable donations need to reach a minimum of 5000€ per month, resulting in a modest salary of 2500€ per developer. If that goal is reached Dessalines and I can stop worrying about money, and fully focus on improving the software for the benefit of all users and instances. Please use the link below to see current donation stats and make your contribution! We especially rely on recurring donations to secure the long-term development and make Lemmy the best it can be.
edit, as this was frequently brought up:
Will donations to Lemmy development go towards the operation of lemmy.ml?
It depends on the donation method used and is limited to around 2% of the minimum overall donation goal. The vast majority of donations is exclusively used for developer salaries.
lemmy.ml hosting is only financed by donations via Opencollective. All other donations go exclusively to developer salaries.
[source]
For donations via Open Collective, yes, a tiny fraction of donations towards Lemmy development will go towards the operation of lemmy.ml. The reasons for this include that lemmy.ml is used for testing new releases and also that it’s not worth maintaining a separate donation account for the instance. Additionally, it should be noted that the money going towards lemmy.ml hosting is just a tiny fraction of the funds that are being asked for. Hosting lemmy.ml costs around €100/month, which is only 2% of the stated minimum donation goal.
You must log in or # to comment.
So all the discourse around lemmy.ml has made it clear to me that Lemmy’s primary org has fallen prey to a key problem I’ve experienced running multiple social media sites and seen in my professional life as well.
And it boils down to this:
The tech guys are trying to be moderators. These are two entirely separate jobs that need completely different types of people to successfully execute the role.
Tech folk are brilliant in their subject, but often terrible at understanding people, social dynamics, and the limits of acceptable discourse. Their profession requires them to spend enormous amounts of time alone, which limits their real world experience, often to a crippling degree.
Good moderators (what used to be publishers and editors in the days of print) are those who understand people like tech folk understand SQL. They understand the multiple layers of subcontext that can be derived from an innocent sounding statement, and they have an innate sense of social dynamics and what is of interest to their audience. They also know how to speak to their audience and promote good content.
Most importantly, they understand that they are the gatekeepers of the publication’s reputation, and safeguard it by being as impartial and fair as possible… a lesson the moderators of lemmy.ml have clearly failed to learn.
The only way to solve this dilemma in Lemmy.org’s case is this:
-
Separate the mod and dev teams. Devs should not mod, and mods should not dev
-
Abandon or spin off lemmy.ml to folks not on the dev team - the fact that the instance is run by members of the dev team taints the reputation of the entire project and infrastructure. I do believe in free speech, but in this case, the reputational damage lemmy.ml has caused to the financial state of the dev team is too great to ignore.
-
Lemmy.org needs to clearly state this delineation and prevent the official dev team from running instances officially attached to lemmy.org.
If this doesn’t happen, I think that donations will continue to decrease until the project starves. There is great value in what the dev team has done, but unless they abandon lemmy.ml and focus entirely on development, I think this project will fail financially unless another dev team with a better rep takes their place.
To be absolutely clear, on .ml hardly any mods do modding, almost all the removals and bans is by one of 2 admins, dessalines themselves or davel (and occasionally a 3rd admin cypherpunks)
https://sh.itjust.works/comment/18374613
I’ll donate money to individual instances, but for as long as Nutomic/Dessalines is in charge of the .ml instance I will not be donating to them.
Abandon or spin off lemmy.ml to folks not on the dev team
lemmy.ml is an important testbed for new releases at scale. Many many issues have been caught by the dev team deploying there. lemm.ee too for that matter.
I do agree that Lemmy.ml should never be recommended as the “official” Lemmy instance, but (correct me if I’m wrong) the Lemmy devs don’t do that. They just say “A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers“ which is fair to disclose (although maybe that could remove that. Idk). join-lemmy.org doesn’t handle or recommend Lemmy.ml specially.
I think usually it’s random users saying “join Lemmy.ml it’s the official instance” and we need to nip that in the bud… but it’s not Lemmy devs’ fault.
Nine times out of ten I hear people say “join Lemmy.World, it’s the catch-all and de facto default instance”. I honestly don’t think I’ve seen people recommend Lemmy.ml unless they’re already ideologically aligned with Marxism–Leninism; if anything, most people seem to expressly recommend people don’t join Lemmy.ml for ideological and censorship reasons (edit: reasons I agree with and echo, to clarify).
I mean I’m pretty lefty and some of the .ml folk scare the lymph out of me.
ML isn’t “far left” it leans leftist, but that isn’t what’s scary about it.
ML is hyper authoritarian (support China, North Korea, Russia to varying degrees).
This is due to them being extremely Campist. Campist meaning they’ll support anyone who “opposes” US influence, no matter how horrible they are.
In my opinion true leftists shouldn’t be supporting American OR Russian/Chinese Imperialism. If you’re anti imperialist, it means being against all imperialism, not just one side’s imperialism.
Absolutely I 100% hard agree with this
Then, you’re probably not as lefty as you think.
We’ve had over a decade of political compass memes at this point. Left ≠ authoritarian and right (as we are clearly seeing now) ≠ libertarianism.
Just because I’m a socialist doesn’t mean I support the CCP or other authoritarian governments.
Oh on the contrary. They’re probably further left than they think. And far further to the left than you think. ML is nominally left at best. Honestly most social democracies really get the concept far better.
I started on .ml exactly for this reason. It was the dev’s instance and seemed like the default. Though that was the time of Reddit’s API debacle, so it’s been .au e a couple years now.
… I didn’t stay on .ml once I realized how it was moderated.
lemmy.ml is an important testbed for new releases at scale. Many many issues have been caught by the dev team deploying there. lemm.ee too for that matter.
In general, it’s considered bad practice to use a live site for testing dev updates, but I can see the value in having this available in this case. However, if they want to use a live site as a test bed for new features using a large audience, then they should ensure their moderation team doesn’t allow the reputation of the instance to become what lemmy.ml’s has. The fact of the matter is that it’s become toxic branding to the overall Lemmy effort, and is actively undermining the dev team’s efforts by impacting them financially.
The only way I can see to do this is at this point is by ceding their involvement in lemmy.ml to another team and rebranding join-lemmy.org as a software package, not a political statement.
So lets assume they dont moderate in a “tanky way” but instead in a “free speech absolutist way”. Then they’ll be criticized for giving nazis a platform. Lets assume instead they will moderate in a “European centrist way”. Then by American standards they’ll be criticized for being far left still. If they moderate in an “American centrist way”, they’ll be criticized as Trump apologist and far right supporters.
It is impossible to moderate in a politically “impartial” way, except to not moderate at all and create a complete cesspool.
Even if they don’t run an instance themselves but instead choose to cooperate with an instance for the testing, that in itself will be an endorsement and scrutinized.
Lets assume instead they will moderate in a “European centrist way”. Then by American standards they’ll be criticized for being far left still.
That’s a far better situation than supporting genocidal dictatorships. I don’t think that’s a hard standard to hold
rebranding join-lemmy.org as a software package, not a political statement
What do you mean by that?
My read is that they’re recommending that
- Devs only work on development.
- A new, separate admin team be found (or formed) to handle administration for any instance that is dev-owned.
I agree with this. The act of administering a dev-operated instance with live accounts + users while working on the dev team presents a conflict of interest which is a deal-breaker for too many donors.
So, rather than simply asking the community for more donations (which is understandable but doesn’t address the root of the problem), it would be best to incorporate the feedback of the community and do away with the conflict of interest. IMO, another way to resolve this COI would be to disable live accounts for anyone who isn’t a developer in the “test” environment.
I’ve seen a defense presented in this thread along the lines of “we should be allowed to admin .ml because it’s a test instance” — but again, due to the fact that there are live accounts for live users (outside of the dev team) in the “test” environment, this is a distinction without a difference.
And what happens if this separate admin team makes decisions which users disagree with? The same debate starts all over again?
You would at least have plausible deniability. The bigger issue is that a lot of the modding being done is by administrators and not by moderators. Some are. But some of the most egregious stuff is being done by administrators.
PR 101. If you want to be an official project supported by many and used by many. Don’t have your flagship deployment hard attached to a controversial subject. Which you should know damn well it is. Second don’t have it administered with a Vanguard mindset. It drives people off. Look I’d be happy to discuss failings and successes of different ml regimes as well as Western capitalist and Democratic socialists. Realistically that can’t be done on your instance. Typically any inkling of discussing failures gets outright denied and usually bans are applied.
Go ahead, Rebrand as lemmy.org. Go ahead and have ml communities. They can even be Echo Chambers still too. Even Lemmy.world has ml communities. The reason that I respect @MrKaplan@lemmy.world and the world team. And would happily donate to them if they needed it. Despite possibly not agreeing politically as an anarchist. Is there administration. It’s thoughtful, deliberative, and sparing. Not vanguardist and cliquish. And it’s no coincidence the administrative flaws are shared with political ideology flaws.
This is it. Right now. This is your golden moment. You’re the lead developer for one of the most popular software platforms on a rapidly growing Federated system. You’re blowing up. You’re trying to go bigger. It’s a position that is yours to lose. And it’s your right and duty to choose. Do you want to be a footnote, or do you want to be a whole chapter? Do you want to be a possible big mover and shaker in Foss? Or is it ml Club forever, and long live the vanguard?
Being inclusive is hard, tolerance is hard, that’s why both are so valued. Believe me I know, I’m not perfect. Any deployment that is going to be seen as a flagship should also strive for that if they want support from disparate groups. And that’s just how it is. There is no debate or discussion to have on the topic.
I mean you realize the entire reason they created this whole thing is so they could have their little fiefdoms from which to dole out their petty little grievances because people on reddit were mean to them, right?
It’s actually a bit hilarious that people on this thread keep giving half hearted defenses here, and noted transphobe Nutomic keeps popping in and being like “actually no, we really are just assholes.”
Lemmy the software’s reputation has become conflated with the reputation of lemmy.ml, which promotes an authoritarian center-left viewpoint that regularly denies documented genocides. This is unpalatable to many end-users.
As such, unless the two are separated clearly and lemmy the organization disavows its involvement lemmy.ml, the overall reputation of the software will degrade, resulting in less use, less money for the developers, and the eventual collapse of the lemmy infrastructure.
Voat is an example of a great software package that became completely tainted by the (developer moderated) site to the point where you can’t mention it in polite discourse any more. Not exactly the same circumstance, and in that case it was taken over by right-wing racists, but the dynamics are very similar.
You seem to have a good grasp of the problem and have proposed a viable solution. Would you like a one month, one year, or permanent ban?
Shit, you triggered my reddit PTSD. I’m having flashbacks…
@nutomic I hope you’re currently taking notes of all of the feedback you’re getting from everyone, particularly this comment. There is a lot that lemmy.ml needs to do to rehabilitate their reputation, and that needs to be done before people will be willing to donate.
If the lemmy devs continue to ignore the feedback from everyone regarding their management of lemmy.ml, their problem is only going to get worse. But if they are open minded about feedback then they have a chance to win people back
I agree with everything you said generally. But one thing I don’t see being mentioned much. That is kind of glaring. Is the fact that when you are developing software etc. You have testing systems and you have production systems. And they are two different systems. You never test on production. And you never use your test server as a production server. It’s a bad idea in general, and there’s no need to. And that really says it all.
The fact that they are using lemmy.ml as a testing and a production server. Isn’t it justifiable, and it isn’t acceptable. Despite the fact that I generally enjoy activity pub, the fediverse and of course use lemmy. Lemmy development will not see a single penny from myself. Nor should it see a single dime of donation from anyone until that’s no longer the case. Which isn’t even bringing up the Cesspool of an echo chamber this joke of a “test server” is
-
Toss a coin to your lemmy maintainer, oh valley of shitposts
Just donated a tenner, keep rocking. Also, fuck spez.
No i will never donate , this format is just jerking off Linux enthusiast, and every time I say Linux in unusable I get negatively marked. Content on this is not so good.its many time repeat of Reddit. There is not a easy way or guide on how to use Lemmy and connect to all differn t forums within or even find them .
In total this format is useful but not encouraging. So no donations
Not sure why you are getting downvoted, pretty much everyone is also saying they aren’t going to donate for one or other reason.
Sorry you’re too stupid for linux.
Asshole
Just threw in a couple bucks! Loving Lemmy, it lacks the stench of capitalism that reddit fell victim to. Thank you to everyone who makes this place work!
Thanks, and youre welcome!
No ads and no algorithm isn’t free.
Folks, open your wallets and throw a few bucks Lemmy’s way. I’m a monthly donor myself, and I consider it money well-spent compared to the shit show that is every other social media platform.
Now I’m supporting lemmy and voyager development. Worth every penny.
I fkn love this community! Just set up yearly dono for 60
Thanks!
https://sh.itjust.works/comment/18374613
I’ll donate money to individual instances, but for as long as Nutomic/Dessalines is in charge of the .ml instance I will not be donating to them.
The purity testing and holier-than-thou attacks going on in these fundraising threads are truly counterproductive. We’re not strong enough as an ecosystem and community yet to be able to afford this luxury. If this is coming from the left, I think you should consider the larger goal here.
I have personal friends in Ukraine who were displaced from their home by the invaders. I cannot morally justify giving any kind of benefit to the people who would praise or support their actions.
Lemmy is just a thing, it can cease to exist for all I care.
I certainly dont praise or support civilians being displaced from their homes. Maybe there are some users who make such insensitive comments, but it doesnt mean that I agree with them.
Get fucked. You support the russian invasion. Millions had to leave Donbas during russian occupation. Tens of million will have to leave if russia succeeds.
You want me and my family to be sent to a russian torture camp for speaking Ukrainian. You deny our country’s right to self determination with your stupid “muh BIA!!!” bullshit and support the extermination of our culture and language.
Hope one day you and your fellow tankies will experience what you wish for me and my fellow citizens.
Fuck you!
I dont want anything bad to happen to you or your family, and you have every right to live in peace in your homecountry. It is unfortunate that you have to live through that. Best of luck!
I don’t buy it, I’ve been on Lemmy long enough to know what the tankie triad is like!
In every single case, the tankies claims that they don’t actually wish Ukrainians harm, but at the same time they support the russian invasion. These two things are not compatible!
If what you’re saying is true, then ML and Grad need to stop spreading russian propaganda and rooting for the russian occupation. Actions, not words!
Dont call me tankie, its offensive.
I was a paid patreon member which was supposed to give you access to the dev chat on discord, but despite asking a few times and paying for almost half a year, it just never happened. So I couldn’t take them seriously.
Since I blocked .ml I can’t leave a reply on the original message, and I’m not going to unblock them just because.
We dont use discord at all, the chats are on Matrix and accessible for free. I see the membership descriptions on Patreon are wrong, will get those fixed shortly.
Ah shit. I’m currently a starving musician. I’ll scrape you off some of the next gig.
Before you do: https://lemmy.world/post/29072279
God, no. If Lemmy today is gonna be all spam of the shitheads begging for money then I guess it’s closer to death than I thought
I’ll take a grassroots donation campaign over ads any day.
edit: relevant context: https://lemmy.ml/comment/18395421
There are other services that can provide what Lemmy does without supporting their admins where your money would be better off going. Or just use adblockers like an adult, lol
That’s actually been my plan, jump ship when .ml’s toxicity finally sank Lemmy, cuz I’m too lazy to do anything until shit actually happens
Can’t you lobby with the EU too to fund you since there’s a real need for European social media alternatives to challenge the dominance of US platforms? Will deffo donate!
Im not a lobbyist and have no idea how to even get started with that. Feel free to give it a try if you have any contacts in that area.
Why would the EU fund developers who are openly supporting russian imperialist expansion and genocide?
I’m skint sorry
For those with decision paralysis, Liberapay is a great choice. They’re a France-based non-profit which is itself run off of donations which it crowdfunds on its own platforn (pretty based tbh), and the site itself is FOSS.
Of some note unfortunately is that donations for development also go to the maintainer-run instance .ml – whose tankie position is to expressly deny genocides like the Holodomor and the ongoing genocide of the Uyghurs by China – but the costs of development versus the costs of just running the server are completely disproportionate in favor of development. With that in mind, being ideologically purist here enables much greater evils, and I think Lemmy has easily given me more than this value: donated $20 (edit: upped to $30 for drama reasons).
How does one AVOID funding .ml?
lemmy.ml is already entirely funded, your donations go entirely to our salaries.
I’m mixed. On one hand, absolutely fuck .ml and tankies. On the other, these guys have done great work. The way it’s set up, Lemmy is not at all beholden to their ideology. We can take it over at any time, and any further work they do benefits all of us, and that can’t be taken away.
As a fellow developer, I truly believe Rust is the way to go for high pressure, high scaling software. I don’t think LW alone could run off of your average python. EVE Online is a great example of that. They pushed python forward to meet their high demand needs, and still had to incorporate a lot of C++. Reddit has had teams of engineers over decades, and in the long run I expect Lemmy to be more efficient. In my professional opinion, this kind of scaling can’t be reasonably done with any garbage collected language.
My other concern is with sanctions. Are these guys in Russia? Is it legal to donate to them? If you’re paying by check or credit card, those institutions will take care of following the law for you.
Overall, I’d encourage people to donate. Open software benefits everyone and any work they do for us is public and can never be taken back.
My other concern is with sanctions. Are these guys in Russia? Is it legal to donate to them? If you’re paying by check or credit card, those institutions will take care of following the law for you.
I’m 99.99% sure they’re not in Russia. I feel like I’ve read they’re in the Netherlands but that needs fact checking.
Addressed this in an edited-in second paragraph. Answer is “unfortunately, you can’t” unless you wish to fork Lemmy. But as someone who’s sickened to my core by tankie ideas, I still think funding this piece of FOSS is by far the lesser evil, I think I make a compelling argument for it, and I do think the Lemmy team do good work on the software side.
If I can hold my nose and vote for the lesser evil, I need to follow that same principle when it’s not just my vote I’m casting but where I’m putting my time and money.
Edit: I completely forgot that you could, in theory, try helping out on their GitHub if you have a background in CS. It won’t pay for the developers’ cost of living, but it could reduce the maintenance burden if you know what you’re doing.
As far as I know their politics and views have had zero impact on the code.
Almost true, being Communists has certainly influenced the reasons for Lemmy as a federated, anticapitalist alternative to Reddit to begin with.
Give your money to any other product or service
If they want money for Lemmy then they can step down or stop being shitty mode
