As many users seek alternatives to X, rival social network Mastodon says that its official app downloads are up 47% on iOS.
Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko says downloads on Android are also up 17%, while total monthly sign-ups rose approximately 27% to 90,000.
The open-source X rival functions much like its competitor, the site formerly known as Twitter, on the outside. However, unlike the centralized Twitter, Mastodon consists of thousands of different social networks, which are integrated into a web it calls the “fediverse.”
Make sure to actually understand how those “non-profit” websites and services are functioning.
It costs money to power servers and to maintain them. Most of the fediverse instances like to claim they are run on donations and so forth. But… think about how angry people get at the idea of tipping for ANYTHING and then wonder how many of those are throwing significant cash at your favorite lemmy or mastodon instance per month.
Everyone is always shocked when they find out how social media or a “free” vpn or whatever is funded and where there information is going. But hey, I am sure it will be completely different this time.
Generally speaking if you aren’t the customer then you are the product. Individual Lemmy and Mastadon instances are getting around this for now because they are small enough that their operational costs can be covered by the ideologically motivated instance admins and users. If Lemmy or Mastadon ever gains wide popularity this will change.
The guy who runs the instance I’m on sends out a statement every month, detailing how much he’s received in donations, what everything has cost, and how much there is leftover. Accounting for a small buffer to allow for emergencies, he donates the excess to Alzheimer’s research. We’re a Pritchett focus instance, so everyone’s happy with that.
I’ve paid far more to my Masto admin than I ever did to Twitter.
You can be against the US’s tipping culture while at the same time being someone who donates to things lol
But yeah, definitely. For a lot of these things the funding has to be coming from somewhere and there’s no way donations are enough.
Exactly.