Hey everyone, hope you’re doing well. For some time, lemmy’s been struggling with donations. For all these years, the lemmy devs, like them or hate them; have been building the software that powers the entirety of the forumverse (that’s what i’m calling it, fuck you) so if you have even a dollar/euro/peso/whatever to give, it would be greatly appreciated (by the lemmy devs, and all instance admins!)
Good day to y’all :D
crossposted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/29579005
An open source project the size of Lemmy needs constant work to manage the project, implement new features and fix bugs. Dessalines and I work full-time on these tasks and more. As there is no advertising or tracking, all of our work is funded through donations. Unfortunately the amount of donations has decreased to only 2000€ per month. This leaves only 1000€ per developer, which is not enough to pay my bills. With the current level of donations I will be forced to find another job, and drastically reduce my contributions to Lemmy. To avoid this outcome and keep Lemmy growing, I ask you to please make a recurring donation:
Liberapay | Ko-fi | Patreon | OpenCollective | Crypto
If you want more information before donating, consider the comparison with Reddit. It began as startup funded by rich investors. The site is managed by corporate executives who over time have become more and more disconnected from normal users. Their main goal is to make investors happy and to make a profit. This leads to user-hostile decisions like firing the employee responsible for AMAs, blocking third-party apps and more. As Reddit is a single website under a single authority, it means all users need to follow the same rules, including ridiculous ones like censoring the name “Luigi”.
Lemmy represents a new type of social media which is the complete opposite of Reddit. It is split across many different websites, each with its own rules, and managed by normal people who actually care about the users. There is no company and no profit motive. Much of the work is carried out by volunteer admins, mods and posters, who contribute out of enthusiasm and not for money. For users this is great as there is no advertising nor tracking, and no chance of takeover by a billionaire. Additionally there are no builtin political or ideological restrictions. You can use the software for any purpose you like, add your own restrictions or scrutinize its inner workings. Lemmy truly belongs to everyone.
Dessalines and I work fulltime on Lemmy to keep up with all the feature requests, bug reports and development work. Even so there is barely enough time in the day, and no time for a second job. Previously I sometimes had to rely on my personal savings to keep developing Lemmy for you, but that can’t go on forever. We partly rely on NLnet for funding, but they only pay for development of new features, and not for mandatory maintenance work. The only available option are user donations. To keep it viable donations need to reach a minimum of 5000€ per month, resulting in a modest salary of 2500€ per developer. If that goal is reached Dessalines and I can stop worrying about money, and fully focus on improving the software for the benefit of all users and instances. Please use the link below to see current donation stats and make your contribution! We especially rely on recurring donations to secure the long-term development and make Lemmy the best it can be.
If .world defederated, lemmy would be instantly 50% less toxic. Plus I’d have to see less genocide apologia, bootlicking for politicians would would gladly have them murdered if it meant it looked good in the polls, and just general “you see, i can fix the problem by being the problem!”
Do you feel like it’s been extra exhausting lately, or is it just me? I used to think hexbear was the biggest pita to deal with but they are honestly pretty chill nowadays, especially compared to LW debate lords.
I don’t know how to put it into words, but I think smug insufferable liberals more annoying to deal with, than tankies who shitpost all day.
I think it helps Tankies don’t really impact much on the grand scale of things. They’re annoying sure, but right now on Hexbear’s post about donating to Lemmy, they are actively calling out Num’s transphobia. Hexbear has been… frustrating at times to deal with, but I can look at that place and not feel personally attacked more often.
lemmy.world personally shat on me and called me a liar, a useful idiot, a single issue voter, a russian bot, a psyop, or whatever else the liberals learned that weak from MSNBC, because I wanted Biden and then Harris to win. I said “Supporting this genocide is a bad look, its harmful optics to the people she wants to help. She should support trans people, show she’s learned since arresting them and making them put in incorrect jail cells that got them killed.” Wanting the democrats to win was considered evil and pro-Trump.
I’ve had comments removed and then banned from a community because I called out a liberal troll making new definitions of words to attack me. He said “You didn’t vote.” I proved I did, he then went “Silly bot, I never meant you when I said that word, I meant you in a different term no one else uses.” I called him out, and I got banned for it. Defending the trolls gets you banned.
Not even getting into how they wanted to censor people discussing Luigi, wanted to platform flat world and other dipshit bullshit in the name of “discussion and sunlight stop ignorance”, are comfortable with transphobic members being the most popular people on their platform, and so many more issues that I’d spend a while talking about.
Or that one of their memes takes memes from .ml while hating on them, and is calling for a boycott of .ml and lemmy, while using lemmy. I can agree with not liking .ml, but they actively want the dev’s main ways of testing things and software that they actively used, underfunded to it stops working. Taking the compensation for labor away because they disagree with them. That’s literally some of the most ignorant, childish shit I’ve heard.
Hexbear has called me an anarchkiddie and that’s it really. Hexbear is more interesting to look at than .world. Even some .ml people I can disagree with poltically, are more put together and interesting to talk to than .world. To the point I go “Oh god, in 5 years time will I be a Stalinist because liberals irked me too much?”
I think something has changed on lemmy.world in the last few months, I think Harris’ loss was a major shake up on their egos, some of which have seemingly changed their ways of how fascism can be defeated. I do however also think it made some double down.
I’ve seen people fully admit they blocked or banned “trolls” who were anti-genocide, and since they didn’t see any more, it asserted their belief it was all Russian bots. They didn’t see posts they blocked or removed or banned, so they were obviously justified. Even when those accounts are still active to this day.
Return2Ozma is probably among my favorite .world members. He’s pretty cool. He called out Biden’s racism bad practices at stopping Trump’s second run, and doing some of what Trump wanted in the first place. Like stopping the testing of COVID. Keeping kids in cages.
And because of that, .world hates him. He said “Harris will lose if she doesn’t fix this.” Then banned him. He was right the entire time, and they hate him, like a dude on lemmy, which maybe 0.1% of the voting public even sees, personally cost Harris the election. Even to this day, several moderators will leave public comments of him using documented, reputable sources showing the DNC is complicit in Trump’s running of America, and call it bad faith, fake news, propganda, etc. etc.
Ensign_Crab is also cool. I really dig their stuff. .world hates him. I’m shocked he’s not banned because he refuses to bend the knee to Blue MAGA. I often check out his page just to see if he’s posted anything neat lately, I enjoy his way of debating liberals.
Genuinely, .ml is often more tolerable. I don’t get to see “well they deserved it for living in a red state” while ignoring that even people who vote blue are stuck in a red state. I don’t see defending the IDF. I don’t see people who think things are only bad now because Trump is in office.
I don’t like the defense of China and Russia, but China and Russia don’t impact me, a person in rural America. American polices being evil effects me more than China’s polices being evil. China having my data is bad, but it’s better than America, who will use it on me because I’m a leftist disabled queer.
This is a very long winded way of saying, Hexbear hasn’t been the worst thing on db0 in my time here since I swapped instances. I like to call db0 my home here on Lemmy. It’s not given me any issues, its never once rubbed me the wrong way with how the admin team has handled things. A small gripe here or there, but never a “I gotta jump ship ASAP.”
God I hope I’m not too long winded on this, I swear to god this is edited. I had a bad day today.
Sorry for the short response, but that was a fantastic read and I think I’m very much simpatico with your own experience. I always admired Return2Ozma too, what a trooper! Glad to have you on the instance :)
Honestly its fine, I’m apparently in a mood lately to write long diatribes about bullshit lately. I just wish I could put this energy into writing my scripts.
I’m just thankful the admins here don’t hate me. I know I can be abrasive, I know I can be wrong, but its just nice to know right now I’m not being a moronic asshole.