SorethNov 19, 2022
Tom Walker

I'll explain this quickly because I've been asked about it a couple of times today:

Mastodon has no ads. Its only source of funding is donations.

You could donate to the open source project itself – a fine thing to do. But at the moment, with the huge influx of new users, the funding is better off going to the instance you are using.

Each instance usually publishes a donate/patreon/crowdfunder/etc link. If you go to
[your instance url]/about
you should find information about it.

Nov 18, 2022 at 10:04pmWeb
Show threadGarrett WollmanNov 18, 2022
@tomw This -- the missing money problem -- is why I do not believe it can actually scale. The end result may be that rich people are able to pay enough for Mastodon to continue working for them, but the other 99% is stuck with Twitter until it fails entirely, because they collectively don't have enough money to pay for enough server scaling, never mind professional server operations and moderation.
Show threadTom WalkerNov 18, 2022
@wollman Well, it's going OK so far. You don't need billions of dollars, just enough to pay the hosting bill. Most people won't donate and that's fine, just some people per instance – a similar model to Wikipedia, for example
Show threadGarrett WollmanNov 18, 2022
@tomw It's a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the number of users on Twitter, and essentially all rich people in rich countries. And servers are not really holding up well under the strain, and operators are begging for volunteers to help them moderate stuff already. It's not sustainable.
Show threadTom WalkerNov 19, 2022

@wollman I don't think you can draw the conclusion from one huge surge day that it's "not sustainable". It's already much faster again.

You seem to think that who pays has some influence on who gets to have an account? But that's not the case, the two are not connected.

Show threadAnderssonNov 19, 2022

@tomw @wollman if email can be free (for most users) so can mastodon.

Some users may choose ads or sell their data. Others will pay for an account or fund a non profit. Some will selfhost.

Show threadTom WalkerNov 19, 2022
@Nlandersson @wollman I hope to be honest that ad-funded servers don't appear, but can imagine it happening. I think the response of the current community though would likely be to defederate them...
Show threadAnderssonNov 19, 2022
@tomw @wollman as long as they only show ads to their own users, why would they be banned?
Show threadTom WalkerNov 19, 2022
@Nlandersson Well I don't know for sure, it would be up to instance admins and I don't know their whole thought process. But I think that commercialisation would go against the spirit of the space, and be seen as a slippery slope.
Show threadAnderssonNov 19, 2022
@tomw lets hope not. Mastodon will probably never be big enough to matter in the social media space without free instances. I have a hard time seeing how that would work without ads unfortunately. The best would be if more people would just pay for their services of course
Show threadTom WalkerNov 19, 2022
@Nlandersson The instances are already free! Via optional donation
Show threadPJ "Vote Green" CoffeyNov 19, 2022

@tomw @Nlandersson

We've seen from a recent post that 22,000 of people can be hosted by a €200 server.

That requires 1/100 to donate €1/month. Doesn't seem unachievable to me.

The bigger costs come with paid mods because vile people post vile things. However the banhammer freely wielded and defederation of the awful, I'd hope, would reduce wear and tear on the mods.

Unsustainable is very much not proven.

Show threadAnderssonNov 19, 2022
@Homebrewandhacking @tomw if that remains true even when the datebases and media storages grow, it might be sustainable.
Show threadPJ "Vote Green" CoffeyNov 19, 2022

@Nlandersson @tomw

Well the alternative is burning to the ground so the centralised model isn't looking viable is it?

Show threadGarrett WollmanNov 20, 2022
@tomw The speed of one particular server is not relevant. The cost of scaling to 300 million users is. The cost of employing actual professional moderators, especially in languages other than English, is. Nobody has presented any mechanism that could possibly pay for that.
Show threadTom WalkerNov 20, 2022

@wollman Most servers were slow on the biggest surge day, most have been fast enough since.

We don't need "professional" anything, the network can scale horizontally ie. by adding more servers. There are already plenty in other languages and there will be even more!

Show threadGarrett WollmanNov 20, 2022
@tomw Tell that to the people who are harmed.
Show threadTom WalkerNov 20, 2022
@wollman I've seen more harm in a single minute on Twitter – even before the layoffs, so when it still had all its professionals – than in my entire time here.
Show threadiChasNov 19, 2022
@tomw
Thank you for your helpful posts. On funding… I tried to donate to my instance (how was that word chosen?), but the universeodon.com websites all seem to be about coding - or joining up. Sigh. Perhaps I’ll give my £10 to Wikipedia instead.
Show threadTom WalkerNov 19, 2022
@iChas If you look at https://universeodon.com/about under "Community support" there are links to their fundraising pages there.
Universeodon Social Media

Be one with the #fediverse. Join millions of humans building, creating, and collaborating on Mastodon Social Network.

Mastodon hosted on universeodon.com
Show threadiChasNov 19, 2022
@tomw
Got it, thanks. I thought the whole page was about login and blah blah. Duty now done.