michael
Eugen RochkoMastodon is financed by crowdfunding instead of venture capital not because we don't know that venture capital exists, not because we don't have bills to pay, and not because venture capital isn't willing to give money to new social media platforms. VCs don't want a sustainable business, they want a big exit. Every VC-backed business is on a timer to deliver or die.
Side note, if you'd like us to help pay our bills for the 5 full-time employees and a number of freelancers we currently have working on developing Mastodon and bringing you new features, and potentially grow the team to do so even faster, there is a number of ways you can do so outlined on this page: https://joinmastodon.org/sponsors
Itaru Kitayama@Gargron just did the humble amount of donation have a great weekend!
Wayne Myers@Gargron To deliver *money*, and *not* the actual thing it was supposed to deliver. They should call it 'PC', not 'VC'. Poisoned Chalice.
Roadskater, Ph.D.@conniptions @Gargron VC is either Vulture Capital, or if you're an old Goldman-Sachs fan, Vampire Capital.
Dan Wolfe@Gargron I appreciate with this, so much that I just signed up for mastodon’s patreon. ❤️
Lazarou Monkey Terror 🚀💙🌈@Gargron I'm tired of the Capitalism, I'm staying here on Mastodon with the Humans, for all their faults.
FediThing 
Exactly 💯
VC money means enshittification.
Thank you for not going down that route 🙏
EDIT: In case anyone is wondering why Eugen is posting on this topic, have a look here https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips/113364985280012085
Fedi.Tips (@[email protected])
This is why I have been trying to warn about #BlueSky. BlueSky has just been partially bought by a cryptocurrency company "Blockchain Capital" and appointed a blockchain / cryptocurrency expert to their board: https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-24-2024-series-a The board member is a bitcoin researcher involved with NFT analytics. BlueSky describe the tie-up with Blockchain Capital as a "natural partnership" and says the blockchain company has "a uniquely deep understanding of our decentralized foundation". (via @[email protected])
jan Anja();@Gargron having something like Proudhon's Bank of the People would be great
Jon Lindemann@Gargron BlueSky was cool for a minute. Then I saw the venture capital announcement and was like, welp, so much for that. VC capital always has a price. They want their return.
Jon Ivy （艾森）@Gargron been spending a lot of time explaining to college kids that being good at capitalism and being good at business are two different things, both functionally and morally different.
William Pietri@jon Thank you for your service! Rampant financialization has confused a lot of people about what good businesses are about
keeps vis.social runningYes!
I may not agree with you all the time, and strongly disagree sometimes, but I completely agree with you on this.
We want sustainable business and social platforms and people first projects.
@Gargron On my instance, we see people join in a wave, then move on to the next shiny platform, and then come back to us.
We are the steady tortoise, that keeps working and improving at a steady pace, and is still here when the shiny platforms crash and burn.
We might sparkle, but that sparkle is from people connecting instead of just broadcasting.
And we care about ethics.
Avery (She/Her)@Gargron and it's really cool how the fediverse scales by having admins create their own servers instead of having one big centralized server. that way, the costs to run individual instances can be kept below the point where they would be desperate enough to try hooking up with a VC! boy, it sure would be silly for anyone to try and scale their individual instance like crazy. i sure do hope that no instance, especially not a developer's dogfooding instance, focuses too hard on getting new users in spite of all this.
william.maggosplease do some kind of public conversation with @evan and @mmasnick.bsky.social and @jay.bsky.team. I hate that people go there thinking they'll get all the same benefits of decentralization and public interest development in either place. there's a trade-off in design and easy money for a reason.
cowboybanjobiker 🤠🪕🚴Because of this, please make sure to support your mastodon instance.
Sally Strange@Gargron *to deliver AND die
Mister Wanko@Gargron Let's choose death for them!
Andrew@Gargron yeah but think about how much you money you could get from a bunch of bitcoin scammers who promise not to pressure you to add bitcoin scams 🙃
0xFFFF_FFFF@Gargron no different from wikipedia, both are authoritarian
Mx VerdaWhat if (somewhat) decentralised, funded-like-libraries and other infrastructure, smaller interoperable wikis?
And/or mandated minority respesentation and community accountable open procedures
0x@Gargron I have talked shit in the past about some of the design decisions you've made, but I want you to know I have the utmost respect for your principled position on this. Thank you.
Igor JagecMastodon will thrive when you make it interoperable with another social networks such as Bluesky.social or Diaspora.
Lê Fê is back@[email protected] I am writing this from mastodon, so I guess it interoperates. But minimally, it could be argued.
I have an account on floss.social so I'll test it when I get a chance, thanks for confirming this.
FLOSS.social
FLOSS.social
@[email protected] You know, I tried bsky too. In the end, I find that good Mastodon apps are delivering content more focused in my interests with zero shade seeking, rage bait, etc. Now I contacted some people at bsky asking them to bridge. After all is just following a profile. Some scientists stayed there, but good discussions in my area disappeared both there and on X, unfortunately. Happy here.
Jimmothy Baggins@Gargron with every news article I see of other media companies and VC anything the more and more im glad Im a part of Mastodon. Thank you for starting this thank you for making this happen
Kneworldodor
OpenSourceHero
Miracles2@Gargron ok, entonces debemos irnos ?
Xing Shi Cai@Gargron The number of users of Mastodon has never become too large. It looks like it will be like this forever. If that is the case, would you regret not have taken some VC money to make it big? Given how Twitter (X)'s current status, I personally would prefer some better alternatives.
lizzzzard@Gargron I really don't get how social networks can be a business case. Paying users that cover server costs and admin wages, sure. But beyond that, I don't see how one would make any profit from it, let alone VC level money (10% roi or more)
it’s social infrastructure like telephone lines, railroads and stations, health regulations, medical studies, disaster alerts, and farming subsidies.
Feels like it needs a baseline investment (in line with any increasing costs) to maintain agreed minimum wellbeing, directly and indirectly.
Like an unconditional baseline investment!
UBI should be a good initialism.
Mastodon MigrationThank you Eugen.
Patrick Leavy@Gargron more precisely "to deliver and then enshittify"
Paul Sochacki@Gargron it's sort of amazing Mastodon hasn't been stomped down already...
<eerie foreshadowing music starts playing in the background>
enmodo ⚛️ 🧬 🇺🇦 🍉@Gargron so true - I worked at a VC funded startup and they let it go for two years with no interest in us making revenue. I was told by the founder this was common and gives VCs more leverage later. If you've created something good then you'll need more money to stay in business and they get more equity for continued funding because you're desperate. And if you're mediocre you're never going to be a great exit so they cut their losses and move on.
Sepia Fan@Gargron
That's another good reason to stay crowdfunded and don't raise VC:
https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips/113364985280012085
by @FediTips
That's another good reason to stay crowdfunded and don't raise VC:
https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips/113364985280012085
by @FediTips
Fedi.Tips (@[email protected])
This is why I have been trying to warn about #BlueSky. BlueSky has just been partially bought by a cryptocurrency company "Blockchain Capital" and appointed a blockchain / cryptocurrency expert to their board: https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-24-2024-series-a The board member is a bitcoin researcher involved with NFT analytics. BlueSky describe the tie-up with Blockchain Capital as a "natural partnership" and says the blockchain company has "a uniquely deep understanding of our decentralized foundation". (via @[email protected])
Sonikku@Gargron It's the old trick- this decades-old website explains it nicely: https://analog-rf.com/busfail.shtml
Cdrik ⏚🌻Suite à ce pouet du créateur de Mastodon ⤴️
Avez-vous déjà donné un peu d'argent pour le projet Mastodon ?
J'avoue moi non, mais je vais le faire asap, en espérant qil y ait plusieurs solutions de paiement. J'utilise Masto quotidiennement.
Et vous ?
Oui déjà donné
Non jamais mais je vais
Non, pas dans mes plans
Autre
Poll ended at .
thomas@Bristow_69
Moi je donne à pleroma et fedilab
Moi je donne à pleroma et fedilab
Turb@Bristow_69
Ah j'ai répondu oui, mais c'était pour @LaQuadrature qui gère mamot.fr (un don multi motivé)
Ah j'ai répondu oui, mais c'était pour @LaQuadrature qui gère mamot.fr (un don multi motivé)
5moufl@turb @Bristow_69 @LaQuadrature c'était pour balancer mon "non". maintenant que tu le dis, j'ai soutenu LQdN dans le passé 🤗
Tykayn@Bristow_69
toutafey depuis 2018 il me semble bien que je file des sous au projet mastodon.
les intermédiaires de paiement se gavent sur ça, et il paraît que la @fsf dispose d'un truc qui permettrait de moins enrichir des intermédiaires mais j'ai pas vu ce que ça donne.
katzenberger 🇺🇦Stop pretending it's about "#crowdfunding", for you. You are expressly working on bringing #advertising to the #Fediverse, and the Mastodon instance that you run.
Vesipeto Vetehinen@katzenberger so why do you think that is @Gargron's goal specifically? The link doesn't really establish a direct link. Also VC funding is a different thing from ads.
Evan ProdromouI want to quote the section about financial viability for you, to make sure it's clear.
"We want the Fediverse to be financially viable
The Fediverse cannot thrive without people building clients or running providers. And to do those things, they need money. Whether that’s advertising supported, or funded by charities and non-profits, or based on paid-for services, or affiliate revenue, we are working to find ways that companies can do well in the Fediverse."
@katzenberger @Gargron I am on a co-op server, cosocial.ca. I think that's an awesome model. I also like SaaS services like masto.host.
@katzenberger @Gargron the goal of the Social Web Foundation is not to bring advertising to the Fediverse. That already exists; there are already fediverse-enabled services that use ads, and there are fediverse accounts that use the sponsored hashtag.
SWF want to help grow the Fediverse and improve the experience, including user safety and privacy, for everyone.
@katzenberger @Gargron let me know if you have any other questions about the SWF mission, projects, or team.
kevin ⁂ (he/him)@Gargron thanks for not selling out! <3
contrefeu@Gargron The only way I see Mastodon and the fediverse succeed is to find a way for non tech savvy people to get into it. If we could develop a solution for anyone to host their instance, on their smartphone for example, it would be an impressive achievement and not necessitate people paying to access their social media.
OpenSoul ✅@Gargron so true
Sparrow 🎄🎁
Lars Marowsky-Brée 😷@Gargron You are absolutely correct on that private equity/VC take.
PIUVAS. 
@Gargron based
Sherlock Hawk@Gargron Sorry to bother, but are you planning to release the annual report for 2023. Love the work, keep it up.
Lorraine Lee@Gargron I have long wondered whether there’s something in the Iron Laws of Economics that dictates that the role of small businesses and startups is to serve as feeder fish in the world of commerce. Startup founders describe themselves and their ventures as “disruptive,” but it’s getting hard to identify possible outcomes for such ventures other than (1) a failed business or (2) a business that is for sale.
Kristoffer Lawson@Gargron it's absolutely true that VC will want an exit. However that can come through an IPO, which is essentially crowdfunding.
If you are serious about crowdfunding, consider opening an investment round for all.
I also agree on the need for sustainable business. But Mastodon doesn't have that, at least one that would give significant resources for growth. Donationware isn't that, and most instances are run out of people's own pockets.