• @[email protected]
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    1068 months ago

    I’m assuming 1172 is a count of donations to official mainstream servers. I have definitely contributed to my local server.

    • Avid Amoeba
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      838 months ago

      I think it’s only donations to the development team. Summing up the donors across Liberapay, Open Collective and Patreon gives close to the number in the title.

      • Andy
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        118 months ago

        I am a Patreon supporter of the developers. It’s that the best way to support the project?

        • Avid Amoeba
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          8 months ago

          The Lemmy project - yes. You want to check if your home instance is sustainably funded too. I think lemmy.world for example is well funded. So is lemmy.ca - my home instance.

          • @[email protected]
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            8 months ago

            I know for a fact that DB Zer0 could use some love, and their admin has created a lot of extra tools that have helped the Fediverse manage abusive instances. If your instance is well funded, but you would still like to donate somewhere to show your support, I highly suggest you check them out.

            Their donation links are in their sidebar.

        • @otterpop
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          78 months ago

          I believe they prefer Libera pay over the other options last I had checked

    • Mac
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      68 months ago

      It’s quite nice running it myself

  • @theherk
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    788 months ago

    Ugh! Can’t they just monetize the sale of our personal data and push nauseating ads every other post… like any other respectable post aggregation platform?

    • umami_wasabi
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      8 months ago

      Ads they won’t (At least I believe so.) But I won’t be surprised that some data harvesting companies have servers set up to collect all the data, aggregate, and sell it. Lemmy is an openly federated platform after all.

      • @[email protected]
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        88 months ago

        sell it

        Sell it? For what, 0 dollars? If anyone wants the data, they can just set up an instance themselves.

        The data is freely available. Just like open source stuff.

        • umami_wasabi
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          58 months ago

          The vaule of the data totally relies on the aggregation process. It involves grouping, categorizing, and linking the unstructured data into a relatable and structured format. For example, A data harvesting company can use their own existing data and link a Lemmy user to a known identity or the probability to a known identity, using techniques like NLP and statistics. That’s value.

          Data most of the time are free, but there are also datasets sold for a price.

  • @Snapz
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    8 months ago

    I think it’s a symptom of Lemmy’s core premise - where do I direct funds as the “common” user (read as less technically sophisticated)? To access and engage with Lemmy I…

    1. use an app…
    2. that channels a specific server…
    3. contained within are individual mods that maintain communities and curate content…
    4. and all of that lives within the larger “world” of Lemmy as an idea

    There are many hands in that chain. Your dedicated users can handle negotiating that decision maybe, but the “common” user cannot - and this post is trying to discuss Lemmy at scale, so you’re talking about that “common” user.

    Again, it’s counter to the founding spirit of Lemmy, but we’re missing a centralized path to supporting all of the distributed hands doing work on this idea. Not an easy problem to solve, but one that should be acknowledged.

  • @Jackthelad
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    528 months ago

    The Lemmy devs are a bunch of tankie weirdos, so I’m definitely not going to give money to them.

    • @[email protected]
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      398 months ago

      Yeah they have made it clear they don’t want me around, on top of that. Donate to instances, not the devs.

    • @AA5B
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      Thanks. I was about to post that I haven’t yet decided whether to donate to my instance or the developers. I might just go with your opinion

      Edit: although after reading, I’m not entirely sure. Part of supporting freedom to discuss is also supporting freedom to discuss things you disagree with or even things that are genuinely hateful. I do tend to end up more on the free speech side than the cancel side. The posted thread from archive at least the complainant moved on: we need to be able to vote with our feet like that

      • @Jackthelad
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        268 months ago

        Lemmy.ml is the devs instance, and they have a habit of banning anyone who even slightly differs from their opinions. Basically, if you’re not a tankie like them, they will likely ban you.

        They’re not interested in free discussions.

        • @[email protected]
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          128 months ago

          But they just personally don’t want that on their instance while they create the lemmy software that allows for everyone to speak their opinions.

          • @[email protected]
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            8 months ago

            They have an extremely low bar for censorship, and I have already seen signs that they will abuse their role to keep their finger on the scale. For example, they selectively federate mod logs, and seem to be running a custom build which allows them to do this. What other forms of fediverse trust are they willing to compromise for ideological purity?

            • @[email protected]
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              98 months ago

              Do you have any evidence for this, or are you just looking at mod logs across instances? There have been about a billion little things that have slowed or stopped content from sharing properly over the history of this system so far—how can you be sure there is malevolence on their part and not simply a bug that hasn’t been patched?

              • @[email protected]
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                68 months ago

                Spoiler: They don’t. They are also not letting the absence of facts hinder them from claiming stuff to be true. Subsequently they worry about why their comments are being moderated.

          • @[email protected]
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            38 months ago

            I guess their diplomacy with me was to follow me around and downvote everything I posted until I just abandoned my original account.

            • @[email protected]
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              8 months ago

              Exactly they only harassed you instead of sending you straight to permaban gulag. Took me all of four or five days to get banned from lemmygrad and that’s without even posting in their communities.

        • @[email protected]
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          98 months ago

          Yeah, they donated their spare time to give you a decentralized platform where you could criticize them because they want to stifle “freedom of discussion”… That the lemmy.ml instance is heavily moderated on stuff like imperialist propaganda is a non-issue for freedom of expression due to the nature of federation. The devs do not even want their instance (lemmy.ml) to be the biggest, but actively promote joining other instances.

          You confuse your right to express your opinions with the privilege of someone else providing you a platform for you to express them on. The devs provide the former without obligating themselves to be the ones to give you the latter.

          • @[email protected]
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            8 months ago

            You’d have a better point if the rules against “imperialist propaganda” were more evenly enforced to include all forms of imperialism.

            But at the end of the day, when given an opportunity to reflect their own values in the way they run their instance, they have chosen a very restrictive framework to that end. I don’t know how you can come to any other conclusion. It is clear that their development effort is not done to protect any speech besides what they have deemed acceptable, and as far as I am concerned, they have repeatedly shown that they will happily keep their fingers on the scale to whatever extent possible. This is why they will ban people for commenting on other instances, and then not federate the mod logs, etc. These things should absolutely be seen as evidence that they will exert control beyond their own instance if they can.

            • @[email protected]
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              8 months ago

              A lot to unpack here…

              include all forms of imperialism

              Being mainly concerned with global economic imperialism does not imply acceptance for more traditional imperialism.

              reflect their values

              Instances are independent and federated, hence do not need to reflect the values of the project as a whole in any way. These properties of decentralization are the values of Lemmy.

              I’ve seen the rest of your claims before and you have been asked to present any facts contributing to them elsewhere. Seeing that you still have not responded to them, I will refrain from discussing it in depth for the time being.

              I get the impression that your bar for “evidence” are lowered due to some personal experience. To actually engage on a point you made, modlogs have been a mess for a while and there are good reasons not to federate all details of content moderated (such as child porn). It seems weird to me that you contribute this to an agenda of the devs trying to control other instances when they were the ones that gave the other instances their independence in the first place. These actions also do not further any such agenda in a meaningful way. The much simpler and probable explanation is that engineering stuff like this is hard.

              • @[email protected]
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                -38 months ago

                It’s extremely easy to see that the modlog on .ml specifically doesn’t match the modlog on other instances, and for issues which have nothing to do with csam. This whole dismissal of it “being a mess” is a pretty convenient excuse for the people who are literally implementing these features. We also know that they never seem to show any admin actions, though this could be attributed to them using alts to moderate. Still kind of shady, but I guess marginally less so.

                If .ml admins would care the explain why their build sure seems to behave differently in a few key areas, then it would go a long way towards assuaging these fears. Or perhaps, if they took concerns about their heavy handed moderation more seriously, they would indeed get the benefit of the doubt in regards to their broader intentions.

        • redfellow
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          28 months ago

          You are confusing freedom of discussion to using an specific instance with specific rules. Lemmy is clear proof of what you say is not true, and you are incorrect in your deductions of what/why and who.

    • @feedum_sneedson
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      I just want Reddit back, it was much better. But it’s dead.

      • @[email protected]
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        08 months ago

        Its been dead ever since normies found it and took it over. Around when /r/wtf turned into into a G rated Disney movie to appease advertisers or soccer moms, etc.

      • @[email protected]
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        68 months ago

        … Can I have your reasoning? Just because they are communists doesn’t mean they are foreign agents, all it means is that they are authoritarians. Besides,idue to lemmy’s federated nature the governments would be better off infiltrating or straight up buying larger social media companies

        • @[email protected]
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          48 months ago

          A lot of them aren’t actually communists, that’s a facade. I have no problem with most communists, it’s a wonderful theory and I get along much better with them than actual capitalists. In fact, I suspect a lot of them aren’t even people, they’re LLMs.

          Lemmy.ml is a mouthpiece for the CCP. They aggressively spread CCP talking points. I abandoned an old account because they followed me around and downvoted everything I posted. This was right after the reddit exodus so I was posting positive, funny memes to help Lemmy grow. They’re very quick to delete and ban people who disrupt their echo chamber, and in my experience they almost never argue in good faith. A lot of them seem like bots, if you talk to them you’ll get weird, non sequitur responses.

          Lemmy is a easy target for propaganda, there’s very little oversight.

        • @[email protected]
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          18 months ago

          Of course, but when someone is involved in leadership of a community that constantly spreads CCP propaganda and organizes to maliciously downvote people who push back against it, it’s quacking like a duck.

  • @[email protected]
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    8 months ago

    I’ve subscribed to patreon in the beginning, and one of the perks was supposedly access to a private group with the devs on discord or matrix, forgot which one. After 3 months and a few questions on how and where to gain access that went completely ignored, I stopped. Not because of the money; but because empty promises don’t sit well with me.

    Edit: They still list “access to the development chatroom” as a perk, now even in the $1 tier. Used to be only from $5.

  • @aeharding
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    398 months ago

    I’m a monthly donor :)

    • Mubelotix
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      188 months ago

      Seeing your comment I was like, oh I know this guy. And then I remembered you are the one building the lemmy frontend I use. Thank you :)

  • @trolololol
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    378 months ago

    I had no idea it accepted donations, if not for this post I would have no idea where to do it. And still not sure how it works and where the money is for exactly. Is it like sponsoring servers for 1 particular instance?

    • Avid Amoeba
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      218 months ago

      The links in this post are for funding the two developers who work full time on Lemmy, the software.

      The instances are sponsored separately via their own contribution links. E.g. look at the sidebar on lemmy.world and you’re probably gonna find them.

      For the system to work we need to fund both the software development and the instances. Currently the software development funding is further behind as it still doesn’t cover two modest salaries. On the other hand I think lemmy.world is sustainably funded. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.

      • @trolololol
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        68 months ago

        That’s useful thx for the intro.

        I think it’s enough for the big picture, and it enables me to make several follow up questions such as

        I had no idea this was in the hands of 2 people. Do they really make a living primarily on crowd sourced funds? Exciting and scary for the future of software in general!

        • Avid Amoeba
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          48 months ago

          There’s a bit more detail here. I think I saw something about NLnet funding getting renewed recently. There are other open source contributors too, but these two are the main Lemmy team.

  • @[email protected]
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    348 months ago

    53k monthly active users is way less than I expected. But makes sense with how slow things are here.

  • @[email protected]
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    198 months ago

    I know people like to shit on the Reddit gold concept. But I still think it makes sense and is one of the least obtrusive ways to raise funds sustainably.

    • @ohlaph
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      68 months ago

      And it was fun to let people know how much you appreciated their comment ot post.

    • cum
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      58 months ago

      That wouldn’t really work in federation, unless the reddit gold mechanic is tied to that specific instance.

  • ChihuahuaOfDoom
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    178 months ago

    I give $1 a month on patreon, hopefully that’s enough cause I’m broke AF.

    • Avid Amoeba
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      178 months ago

      If you’re broke, don’t give. I think there’s enough of us who can afford a few bucks a month and we should get more people to do it.

    • @KrankyKong
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      8 months ago

      It’s a dollar more per month than most of us, including myself, will ever give.

  • @[email protected]
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    148 months ago

    i was once told to hotlink images from other hosters… as opposed to uploading to lemmy. (to save on resources!)

    • @[email protected]
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      -128 months ago

      Hotlinking is stealing. Besides servee owner could change the images your hotlinking to. Or he coukd delete it altogether

      • nick
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        68 months ago

        The web is built on hot linking hypermedia. It is more fragile obviously, but it distributes the bandwidth and storage load. If nobody hotlinked, then small forum admins/Lemmy admins/etc. have considerably more cost to bear.

      • @[email protected]
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        18 months ago

        If the server owner isn’t fine with others hottlinking they can simply deny requests not related to there website(s). On that note, I hope you are donating to your instance, otherwise by your logic you are stealing there resources.

        • @[email protected]
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          18 months ago

          I hope you are donating to your instance, otherwise by your logic you are stealing there resources.

          How is that my logic? Admins of my instance are fine with people using their instance without donation so there is nothing unethical here. If people must pay to use their instance then it can’t be called “donation”, it’s called “payment”.

          If the server owner isn’t fine with others hottlinking they can simply deny requests

          Can I use same logic to say if you are not fine with people robbing your home, you must lock your door?

          • @[email protected]
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            18 months ago

            Admins of my instance are fine with people using their instance Fair enough, it appears they are completely happy for you to use up a small piece of there resources

            If you can’t be bothered to spend 5 minutes to put up the magical “do not use my resources” message (origin: Same-site) in your site’s headers, then I think people would believe that using up a portion of your bandwidth is fine and act accordingly.