this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2025
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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?
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Svsgmegmsgmgwmsgnsgnsgnwf...have we?
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SvsgmegmsgmgwmsgnsgnsgnwfWhat does "implemented" mean?
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SvsgmegmsgmgwmsgnsgnsgnwfBuddy 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.
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SvsgmegmsgmgwmsgnsgnsgnwfI don't see why you're being so hostile to him. I also didn't know this about a livable wage. I didn't know we were doing studies on it and thought that it actually referred to a subsistence wage.
I would actually usually say I don't like the term livable wage and think we should say "respectable wage" instead. It looks like they mean the same thing, though.
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.
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SvsgmegmsgmgwmsgnsgnsgnwfWho hurt you?
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SvsgmegmsgmgwmsgnsgnsgnwfIn a centrally-planned system? Yes, it is very hard.
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?
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SvsgmegmsgmgwmsgnsgnsgnwfThe fact that they exist does not imply that they were ever able to serve their community/customers/users universally. You either get some people being served well at an inefficient overall cost, or you get everyone being served poorly by a broken system which can not afford to provide adequate resources to workers.
IOW, I'm not arguing that "coops" can not exist. What I am arguing is we will never get rid of Big Tech if we keep forcing the idea that only community-owned services are acceptable models of governance.
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SvsgmegmsgmgwmsgnsgnsgnwfPutting these two in the same bag is a mistake, this is what OP and I are saying.
Context and scale matters. Even though both small and big companies depend "on profit", the methods they use and incentives that drive them are wildly different.
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SvsgmegmsgmgwmsgnsgnsgnwfOf course the scale of the business matters. If scale doesn't matter, a bunch of farmers selling their produce at a local market would be bad for their local community as Walmart.
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SvsgmegmsgmgwmsgnsgnsgnwfAnd OP and I are saying that this generalization is shortsighted. You end up putting on the same bag:
By treating them as equal because "both of them are seeking profit", you are left with an economic system that is unable to grow to match the demands of the people.
I did, many times. It's just that you don't want to hear it.
The point is "Community is not enough" (I did link to the blog post, didn't I?) and I've been saying since 2022 that the Fediverse will not be able to grow until is dominated by this belief "that every profit-seeking business is bad and therefore should be rejected".
You can be mad at me all you want, you can be upset at this sad reality all you want, you can cry in a pillow all you need, but you can not say that the Fediverse has been a success story. We've had so many opportunities handed out to us to take this place and grow to become a viable alternative for everyone but we squander it every time because the loud minority of ideologues keep screaming "no businesses here!".
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SvsgmegmsgmgwmsgnsgnsgnwfIf you are not angry, you are certainly reading as someone who is facing an amygdala hijack. Your responses do not seem as someone who is collected and you do not seem willing to listen to what others are trying to express.
Case in point:
You are right, we are talking only about the features they share (i.e, profit-seeking) and whether this means that they should be treated equally. I didn't say they were completely different. But do they have to?
Let me try again: you are asserting that a small-scale farmer who works out on their own volition and makes a living by selling their produce at a higher price that it cost them (i.e, seeking profit) is a net-negative to society and as unethical as a huge corporation like Walmart. You are saying "the scale doesn't matter, any one working looking for profit is bad". Is this correct or am I misrepresenting you?
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SvsgmegmsgmgwmsgnsgnsgnwfLook, I am sorry. I didn't mean to offend you and I didn't mean to "diagnose you". You asked me why I was responding as if you are angry, and I tried to illustrate how your responses are sounding on this side of the conversation. I might be completely wrong, but this is how I am perceiving it.
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SvsgmegmsgmgwmsgnsgnsgnwfThis is a great question and something we shouldn't shy away from considering.
As far as hosting a mastodon instance? That's something that should be done for free with the only income being donations.
These people do it because they want to. It's not necessarily "work" for them, which is why they do it for free anyways. It's also sustainable. As more users join their instance, costs for hosting will increase but so should donations. It's not that expensive to host servers, despite what some conpeople and their useful idiots may have told you. (don't assume you know the costs of hosting if you've never done it yourself.)
Admins get a lot of power that they have no problem abusing, either. This alone would make me a moron for even considering paying them for it.
"Yeah bro, I'm gonna pay you to host your instance where you have absolute control and can censor anything you don't like."
This is fun for them. That's why they do it.
There is not a single Mastodon &server out there that have increased donations or reach a sustainable level after they reach a few thousand users.
Also, there are not enough admins around "doing it because they want to" if we want the Fediverse to grow a few millions users.
Instagram has 2 billion users, Pixelfed largest instance has less than 200k active users. We would have to get 10 THOUSAND admins in order to compete with Instagram.
Are you referring to active users, or just accounts-made? If you're referring to active users, then can you point to any Mastodon instance with thousands of active users and the donations they receive?
If you're referring to accounts made, then you don't really have a point because thousands of accounts are unlikely to substantially increase server costs unless they're all active (see above).
Are you joking? There's no "shortage of instances" going around. As more people join the Fediverse, more admins will start instances. This is a non-issue.
In fact, I'd wager the vast majority of instance-owners are bored, twiddling their thumbs due to their lack of users.
See above.
Newsie.social has (had) 20k active users, mostly professional journalists. It has been threatening to shut down due to lack of funding for two years already. Every month their admin needs to beg around for people to donate.
Fosstodon started with enough donations that they could even send some of their money to upstream projects. Nowadays they are invite-only because they don't get enough funding to sustain infinite growth.
Moth.social was active while they were sponsored by Mozilla, they are shutting down in March 12th due to lack of funding.
I could go on.
This is just wishful thinking. Go ahead and open an instance with open registration, see how long it will take for you to regret it.
And there is a huge number of admins that got users and then burned out due to harassment, spam, entitled users asking for/against federation due to petty drama...
Can you provide any sources for where you're getting this information? Did any of these instances share their server expenses and how much was being donated, or are we just supposed to "trust them bro"?
Are you delusional? I'm not even going to entertain how stupid this response is.
And there's a huge number that don't and enjoy having power over the discourse, as evidenced by how many of them do it.
I have to say, you're pretty ~~naive~~ innocent to the world around you. It's to be expected that you're going to bat so hard for people trying to take money from you without verifying their expenses.
*Apparently he reported my comment to have it censored for calling him "naive" rather than present arguments that show us that he's not.