YSK that the first thing someone sees upon visiting Discuss.Online is 3 full pages of advertising - Discuss Online
# Support Lemmy development >An open source project the size of Lemmy needs
constant work to manage the project, implement new features and fix bugs.
Dessalines and Nutomic work full-time on these tasks and more. As there is no
advertising or tracking, all of our work is funded through donations. Even so
there is barely enough time in the day, and no time for a second job. 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 we can stop worrying about money, and fully focus on
improving the software for the benefit of all users and instances. We especially
rely on recurring donations to secure the long-term development and make Lemmy
the best it can be. >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.
>Nutomic and Dessalines, Lemmy Developers There are reasons for this, but I am
focusing here on the impact that it has upon the recipients. Zero mention of
PieFed, Mbin, Sublinks, or for that matter, the operating costs of
Discuss.Online. This ad is not promoting the “Fediverse/Threadiverse”, but
instead funding the political messaging and curation of content on the Lemmy.ml
[http://Lemmy.ml] instance, with some portion also going to development of
additional software features. We are not told how much, but seeing the rather
large number of entries in the modlog on that instance those curation and
posting activities done by those asking for funding definitely do not take zero
time. Note that the developers have refused to provide a means to fund only the
software without also funding the lemmy.ml [http://lemmy.ml] instance. I have
used PieFed for a year and never once seen anything remotely like this. I used
to use Kbin before it forked into Mbin and again never saw anything remotely
similar. The operating costs of DO are real and valid - and if the message had
been for that purpose then I would have been fine with it. There are many many
ways to fund development of the Threadiverse, and most of them do not require
platforming messages that routinely call for the literal murder of everyone
living in a Western civilization - a topic that has been discussed in great
depth pretty much everywhere across the Threadiverse so let’s avoid going deeper
into it here and instead I will just point anyone interested to
[email protected] [/c/[email protected]] and leave
it at that. I did not appreciate seeing this 3-page advertisement (given the
font size used, I had to scroll down almost exactly 3 pages worth to get to any
other content). New users fleeing corporate enshittified social media will not
appreciate it either. Thank you for letting me vent. There are many
possibilities for a solution - including modifications to the Lemmy sourcecode
as it runs on DO machines to remove this “feature” (while leaving other more
opt-in calls for donations in place), and I am aware that I can click the
prominent X button to make it go away (although nowadays the advertisement comes
back when I revisit the page? it did not used to behave like that, but now it
does for some reason, at least for me?) - but chiefly here I was focused on the
poor look that it gives us. This is yet one more reason why I am being driven
away from using Lemmy, as it enshittifies for the sake of its own profit, even
if to a vastly reduced degree compared to corporate social media. Please
remember the community guidelines [https://discuss.online/post/33592245] prior
to responding.
Gavin Starks
Osna.FM
jnazario
fellsandlakes
OpenStars
Ron Piggott
CBC New Brunswick
3i/Atlas