Why YSK: Getting along in a new social environment is easier if you understand the role you’ve been invited into.
It has been said that “if you’re not paying for the service, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.”
It has also been said that “the customer is always right”.
Right here and now, you’re neither the customer nor the product.
You’re a person interacting with a website, alongside a lot of other people.
You’re using a service that you aren’t being charged for; but that service isn’t part of a scheme to profit off of your creativity or interests, either. Rather, you’re participating in a social activity, hosted by a group of awesome people.
You’ve probably interacted with other nonprofit Internet services in the past. Wikipedia is a standard example: it’s one of the most popular websites in the world, but it’s not operated for profit: the servers are paid-for by a US nonprofit corporation that takes donations, and almost all of the actual work is volunteer. You might have noticed that Wikipedia consistently puts out high-quality information about all sorts of things. It has community drama and disputes, but those problems don’t imperil the service itself.
The folks who run public Lemmy instances have invited us to use their stuff. They’re not business people trying to make a profit off of your activity, but they’re also not business people trying to sell you a thing. This is, so far, a volunteer effort: lots of people pulling together to make this thing happen.
Treat them well. Treat the service well. Do awesome things.
People should also remember that it costs money for these servers to exist. So if you enjoy using it, try to support the service by donating to your instance, contributing to open source projects, spreading the gospel, etc.
Couldn’t agree more, we need to continue to attract the kind of people who would really be able to help grow this kind of community, so if you have friends you think would like this, try talking to them.
Drop a couple bucks into support the admins and servers - think about streaming services you pay for and use less. $5-10/month to donate to a service you are using daily is pretty cheap considering.
I see a lot of people willing to support the servers, but little conversation on how to support the admins. I support a living (and competitive) wage for folks, and don’t think instance admins should be doing this work for free. If you set up your own tiny instance for your family, sure, I bet you won’t be charging your family for it, but a huge instance with constant needs and a bunch of strangers is a totally different thing. Just donating toward server costs does not allow admins to pay their personal bills, while they put in hours of work to keep this place going. So, I appreciate you for including “admins” in the support needs!
I said I’d be willing to pay up to 5/mo for baconreader, this should be no different… Once I figure out the instance that really matters to me.
Yeah, I used to pay $3/month for Apollo - would be very happy to donate that to lemmy server admins instead. My issue is that I don’t know what instance(s) to donate to given that I’m absorbing content from quite a few different instances at the moment. One of the issues with decentralisation is that I don’t really know who deserves my financial support the most! Maybe I’ll just donate to my home instance.
I know a lot of people hate it but I wonder if crypto/digital donation would work. All you would need is a separate wallet setup to pay the host every month. Maybe even have a graph/chart showing how much is in the wallet vs how much the monthly bill is.
One problem with cryptocurrency is that instead of being coupled with mainstream banks (where workers get their pay deposited) it is instead coupled with speculative assets employed by criminals. As such, choosing to work on accepting cryptocurrency instead of working on accepting real-money donations ties the service to a crime economy instead of a mainstream economy.
I like this for the transparency but crypto is an open ledger, anyone can see the balance of any address at any time as well as see where the addresses where money was sent. Plenty of hosts now take crypto and most larger exchanges are tagged on explorers for btc, ltc, etc. That makes it easier for the public to keep an audit on what’s going on.
I’m dirt poor but I’ve donated to Wikipedia at least three times now. I use that website so often, it’s changed my life.
I gave them some money after I graduated college. I had used them so much it felt right to give back a bit.
You’ve inspired me to be honest. I really didn’t use much of Wikipedia in high school or university but I’ve definitely fallen down the wiki-hole very many times and leanred things that there’s no way I’d have learned if not for the convenience. Gonna donate them a fiver now; it ain’t much, but it’s honest work.
Beehaw has a periodic financial update. It would be great if each instance had a similar kind of update so that we can understand what is needed and where to help.
That gives me an idea!
I like it, and it represents the spirit of the fediverse well, but power does cost money. It seems like you want to run a small hands off instance, which is great, but if it starts to grow you might want to keep that in mind.
Eh, I like free software the same way I like free beer - I don’t ever have to pay for it, and no one can compel me to. The beauty of community projects and free software. I enjoy being a freeloader, thanks very much. I will contribute by making this an active project with my posts.
Eh, I like free software the same way I like free beer - I don’t ever have to pay for it, and no one can compel me to.
Right, and no one is even attempting to compel you to. In my opinion, this is one of those “within your means” kind of thing. If you went to your friends house, hung out, and drank his beer every weekend, month after month, his reaction might depend on your ability to contribute. If he knew you struggled to make ends meet, he might be just fine with it, especially if you tried to help out in other ways. He you make more money than he does, and he was the one scraping by, he might get resentful. Either way, he can’t compel you, but one is kind of shitty.
Some of us have more ability to financially support than others, and that’s fine. Last night I made a donation to the developers and another to my instance admins. I’m thinking about making that automatic monthly, but we’ll see. The point is, I think it’s fine if this is a bit socialistic, with some paying a lot, some paying a little, and others not paying at all, as long as the community is able to thrive. By the same token, some instance owners will likely consider it a hobby and not need/want any donations, while some others won’t be able to support growth without them.
Well, I will sound immensely selfish, and maybe it’s because I’ve been so used to “free everything” on the Internet, but I will never pay for an online service ever. I pirate all my books, all my TV shows, and use scripts and archive.is to read online newspapers and magazines for free. Life costs so much money already, I will never ever feel bothered to actually donate to an online service or free software.
If Lemmy.world goes down due to lack of funds, no problem from me. I’ll join a different instance and carry on. Or go back to Reddit.
I’ll happily admit to being a loafer on the Internet. I expect little from my services so long as I don’t have to pay shit for it.
Mostly what I feel is gratitude. Personally, I don’t have the skills, technical knowledge, or free time required to run even a small instance. I know I’m relying on the generosity of others, which makes me much more tolerant of delays, glitches, etc.
Nope. You’re the USER. A concept that is as old as computing and yet has gone completely by the wayside recently with the corporate monopolization of the internet.
Good to see it making a comeback.
“If you’re not paying for the service, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.”
I see this everywhere, it’s the logical fallacy equivalent of “everything that’s rare has value”.
I’m sure most people, on the top of their head, can think of at least 3 products that are free to use and aren’t engineered to leverage their private information (Wikipedia anyone?)
What is true though, is that if you’re not paying for the product or service, SOMEBODY ELSE definitely is. So the question is: “who is paying for me? And why are they paying for me? What is at stake for them?”
This is open source. We are neither products nor customers - we are all test subjects.
That’s a little reductive… Lemmy Admins are users as well. And any bug reports or feedback you provide is implemented to improve Lemmy, which we all benefit from.
