To be fair, it kind of bubbled up gradually over the course of several years. 😅 It did not happen all at once!

Hey, thanks for asking! It largely boils down to money, people, and time. I’m currently a full-time student, and struggling to stay afloat.

Here’s all the things I currently do:

• Research / Testing (gathering info for stories, tracking down info for sources, testing apps and platforms)
• Writing articles, interviews, guides, and reviews.
• Content Editing pieces submitted by contributors
• Scheduling for Podcast interviews
• A/V Production
• Podcast Distribution
• Music Promotion
• Graphic Design (thumbnails and such)
• WordPress development (features and data)
• Social Media Management (11+ accounts)
• Instance moderation
• Event coverage
• Manage a Contributor Team
• Fundraising
• System Administration

I’m probably missing a few things. It’s a lot! And, while I’ve been able to balance this out for a long time, my severe burnout has seen diminishing returns. I’m at a point where articles are getting finished days and even weeks after something has happened, which… isn’t great.

All of this stuff is more or less being done for pennies an hour. It’s not sustainable.

We Distribute hosts a version of their podcast, Decentered, on PeerTube: https://spectra.video/c/decentered_podcast

Yeah, discovery remains one of the big domain area problems for the network. There’s some promising work happening in the space, but it’ll be a while before we see something.

Incidentally, our publication is federated, and can be followed at @news@wedistribute.org!

I don’t disagree, but again, the listed platforms are launch partners who have opted to publicly support the organization on Day 1. It very well could be that they reached out to Lemmy and other projects, and didn’t hear anything back.

The list of shout-outs in the main announcement pertains to projects who have partnered with the SWF, and intend to support it and collaborate.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that there are more than 80 different platforms in varying states of development. Yeah, Lemmy is one of the bigger ones, and OG Threadiverse, but the list of platforms to name is absurdly long at this point. I think it makes sense for them to focus on the protocol, and immediate partners.

RFF is amazing, and offers so much high-quality music. Historically, it’s all been done by one guy, supporting 500+ artists.

The connotation has more to do with the long tradition of Pirate Radio, not a bunch of random CIA stuff.

The difference here is that you literally sign in with your existing Fediverse identity.

Some of the people in the space are tired of panhandling, and would like to actually get paid for things they do. This can include: covering monthly instance costs, selling subscriptions to premium articles for a newspaper, supporting a video creator on PeerTube, or donating to an open source project. A subscription system is one way of doing that.