Mastodawn

Some extended thoughts:

I’m truly sad to hear the discourse surrounding #mstdnca and learn of the allegations against its instance owner, Chad.

I made my fediverse home with mstdnca in Nov 2022 when there was only 1600 of us. Me and Chad connected and I became the 2nd volunteer moderator. We also became friends.

That was a pretty exciting time for the mstdnca community. A Canadian social media alternative was growing! We had prominent figures + politicians joining.. we had an organization sponsoring us. There was lot’s of promise for our growing community.

During this time, there were promises made to ensure our community could thrive and to do that we needed governance, boards, oversight. A community building project I was eager to participate in.

But it never happened. Why?

Most early adopters will note the first immediate reason was because of needing to keep up with the servers exponential growth. The “growing pains” of the instance.

Another reason I’ve read is that no one offered to help, and I’m here to say that’s not true, atleast not at the beginning.

Myself and the 2 other moderators were highly skilled in different areas, and we had a ton of other highly-skilled people willing to help. I put out a call for volunteers for different groups and committees and we had dozens of people eager to participate.

But nothing ever got off the ground.

I volunteered a total of 6 months before resigning. There was some discourse within the volunteer team, stemming what felt like a lack of leadership and direction.

Despite this, Chad became a good friend of mine—but we haven’t spoken since last year when he didn’t respond to a text I sent expressing something that was bothering me in our friendship. The community stopped feeling like home so I left and came to ottawa.place a few months ago.

While my reasons for leaving were ultimately personal, I can’t help to take note that 3.5 years later, the promise of governance, board, and oversight has still not been met and the growing pains haven’t ended.

Edit: grammar

1/2

Stéphanie 1d ago

@erin thank you for sharing your experience. I didn't want to put your name in my post without knowing if you were ready to share.

You did so much work back then! We were lucky to have you

@stephanie I didn’t see your post until just now! Same reason I left names out of mine 😉

Thank you! You should also be commended for all of the work you put in to the Mastodon Canada community. It’s a shame to see where the community is at the moment.

Stéphanie 1d ago

@erin we all loved the community so much and gave so many hours that year. We did our best 💜

I'm just hoping he can do the right thing this time and accept to transfer/give/gift the instance until this is all cleared out.

David Harrison 🇨🇦1d ago

@stephanie @erin With all of the hardware at his house and presumably at risk of seizure as a result of his lawsuit, I think any transfer would have to involve moving all of the data to another server or a hosting org such as Fedihost. That, in turn, will mean someone to pay the bills.

It’s not impossible, but it’s certainly going to take real work to protect that instance. I hope it happens.

Innocuous In Innisfil

@david @stephanie @erin
I had the same thought David. Transfer the instance to FediHost. Turn it into community funded (like cosocial) and recruit a volunteer board from its members for administration. Administration duties would be directed towards stability and growth as FediHost would handle day-to-day tech and moderation.

@PaulBusch mstdn.ca is community funded currently, just on a volunteer donation base. Everything you’re saying outside of the hosting was what the initial intentions were for Mstdn.ca, it just never happened, and likely will never happen without a change in leadership.

@david @stephanie

David Harrison 🇨🇦1d ago

@erin @PaulBusch @stephanie And people were pushing for that stuff multiple times.

As much as I like CoSocial, not everyone is going to be willing to pay. Ideally mstdn.ca moves to a “two tier” membership model where people who subscribe get some extra benefits. Funding be based on emergency appeals.

I think a lot of people will just drift away. CoSocial got about 10 new people over the weekend, which is a lot for a small instance. Gotta assume hundreds of people left mstdn.ca overall.

Innocuous In Innisfil 1d ago

@erin
I'm a monthly donor to mstdn, but most aren't, hence financial challenges at times. No one wants a for-profit model as that drives wrong behavior. But if you value your Mastodon community, funding to maintain it is a must. Two-tier is fine but IMO the lower tier is not free. And I think the funding model, and associated member privileges to impact current and future operations, is moot without the one important factor you've mentioned - a change in leadership.

@david @stephanie

David Harrison 🇨🇦1d ago

@PaulBusch @erin @stephanie I think we have a different perspective on free users, but other than that I agree completely. A leadership change has to happen for anything else to improve, and without assuming any guilt on his part, his statement today makes it clear that it’s going to be the status quo for (likely) many months.

🦞🚴🥔1d ago

@david @PaulBusch @erin @stephanie Personally I think we've seen multiple examples of how social media doesn't work if you require users to be paying members. It especially ought not to work for Mastodon because what is a paid server going to do to stop people interacting with it from free servers, without defederating?

I would immediately leave an instance that offered any sort of benefit to paying members, even just trifles like profile badges. That's a very short road to in-groups and out-groups and social stratification on lines of wealth, and that's what I came to Mastodon to get away from.

Whether or not I contribute financially, or whether or not anyone else contributes financially, is nobody's business.

Stéphanie 1d ago

@ivanvector @david @PaulBusch @erin My personal view on that is that no one should take on a bigger server than they can financially deal with themselves.

You can then ask for donations to help cover the costs.

After that, two approaches: full transparency of the costs+donations; or "trust me" approach.

People can then decide what's proper for themselves. I'm all about the "trust me" approach if the admins don't ask for donations. But I wouldn't donate without full transparency (or knowing the people personally)

David Harrison 🇨🇦1d ago

@stephanie @ivanvector @PaulBusch @erin I agree, but mstdn.ca got “caught” by that large Twitter exodus and ended up growing very fast very quick, mostly because the name Chad had picked made it sound like THE instance from Canadians. So it’s still one person’s instance, with some volunteers, and now we’re seeing the problem.

If it had stayed around 200 users, it would have likely been fine, but it’s too large to not have a proper structure around it.

@david @stephanie @ivanvector @PaulBusch my issue is that he promised structure. He promised governance. And it was his actions that prevented it from happening.

David Harrison 🇨🇦15h ago

@erin @stephanie @ivanvector @PaulBusch Agreed. I remember being in a town hall when many people were pushing for structure and were willing to participate. The interest was there.

Michael Gemar 14h ago

@david @erin @stephanie @ivanvector @PaulBusch At the micro level, decentralized systems are more affected by the personalities and quirks of the individuals who run their little fiefdoms. But at the macro level, centralized systems are more affected by the personalities and quirks of the individuals who run the whole show.

@david I had DOZENS of people like over 30 people want to participate in my volunteer survey I made to help construct how the governance would operate. We ended up a couple new moderators out of the group, never got to the other pieces. To no fault of any of the moderators, we were all eager to get started but kept being halted. @stephanie @ivanvector @PaulBusch

Innocuous In Innisfil 23h ago

@ivanvector @david @erin @stephanie

Mastadon as a free service would be awesome. Unfortunately for Mastodon to exist requires real costs. Hardware and software cost money. Internet connectivity is an expense. Tech management, admin effort and moderation takes time from someone and we shouldn't expect they'll work for free. Funding models can be varied, but funding is required.

If you value your community then it needs to be funded somehow, consistently to be stable and sustainable.

🦞🚴🥔20h ago

@PaulBusch @david @erin @stephanie I don't know where you all read in my comment that Mastodon should always be a free service and never solicit nor accept financial contributions. My argument is that financial capability must not become a barrier to entry. Mastodon is much more valuable to me as a platform where all voices are equal, versus one where only those who can pay the price of admission get an equal voice or a voice at all.

Is there a moral obligation that those with means should contribute financially to the operating costs of their instance? Maybe so. I don't think that instance operators should be afraid to ask for donations, but asking for money also obligates transparency as to how the money is being spent. Plenty of social good not-for-profits operate this way, it's not novel.

I was never on mstdn.ca but I'm hearing from those of you who were that there were promises of management openness, financial transparency, and sharing the operating burden, that never materialized. I find it amazing (as in ridiculous) that a "national instance" was (is?) still being run by one guy out of his house.

David Harrison 🇨🇦20h ago

@ivanvector @PaulBusch @erin @stephanie He does have a couple of admin volunteers and a bunch of moderators - but yeah, it’s not well structured. As for “his house”, my understanding was that moving to physical hardware was meant to reduce costs long term.

I do security stuff for a large government-focused SaaS company, and I just can’t with the idea that is a safe way to operate.

Michael Gemar 23h ago

@ivanvector @david @PaulBusch @erin @stephanie I have to disagree. A funded instance is a far more stable instance, and if I get value out of being in an instance, I think it’s my obligation to pass on some of that value to the folks who make it possible.

Tim Bray 14h ago

@ivanvector Hmm, I look at the data and draw the opposite conclusion: That social media doesn't work if it's free. The old cliché is true: If you're not paying, you're the product. Obviously, there are exceptions: Academic institutions and political organizations should have instances available for their communities.

@david @PaulBusch @erin @stephanie

rhempel 20h ago

@PaulBusch @erin @david @stephanie I paid the fee for cosocial.ca today and moved instances.

I donated a similar amount to mstdn.ca and I hope that the data on the servers and control of the mstdn.ca instance are transferred before the assets are seized or before the Internet service is cut off.

I'll pay for transparency and stability - it's not fair to ask for free service unless you really can't afford it and need support. Our local Y has that model and I'm happy to support that.

David Harrison 🇨🇦20h ago

@rhempel @PaulBusch @erin @stephanie The incremental cost per user on Mastodon has to be pretty small, particularly for people who aren’t heavy users and don’t follow a lot of people from other instances. So I think there can be paths to offering free access – but unless an instance has a separate revenue/funding source, revenue needs to be a part of the planning, not something that happens every few months with an “emergency plea”.

Stéphanie 20h ago

@david @rhempel @PaulBusch @erin I would like to say that when we left the moderation team (Erin, me, Jace), there was a constant stream of donations - enough to sustain the instance for multiple years. That was a couple of years ago.

rhempel 19h ago

@stephanie @david @PaulBusch @erin I'm going to let the courts figure out what the outcome should be for Chad - when there were difficulties with keeping the server up a few months ago I donated without thinking too much about issues like governance and stability.

Once a news story like this breaks and there is no apparent plan for handling the risk, then I've got no qualms about moving to a more transparent instance.

My comments and posts on mstdn.ca are there for as long as the server is up.

Stéphanie 19h ago

@david @rhempel @PaulBusch @erin I should be more clear. When the comms were good, the money was totally not a problem, even with the huge size of the instance. The problems were technical back then.

@stephanie @david agreed we were in a good place as of mar 2023.

Edit; from what I was told. I never saw details.

@rhempel @PaulBusch

@david and emergency pleas should come with comprehensive financial statements. At minimum there should be at least an annual financial statement.. I have never seen any details, not even when I was mod.

@rhempel @PaulBusch @stephanie