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@ntnsndr

in other words

pay your admins if you can

;)

@Aphrodite @ntnsndr noob question here, is there an easy way to do this? How do I find out who the admins are even?

@HunterAnton @Aphrodite @ntnsndr A good place to start is to put your Mastodon domain name into a web browser, in your case it would be https://mastodon.social then look for the about our funding info, again in your case that's the ... on the right, the details link to https://www.patreon.com/mastodon

@forelioned @Aphrodite @ntnsndr thanks!

@Richard_Hull already talking with them.

@Richard_Hull https://www.loomio.com/d/nAKCBjpt/social-coop-is-a-company-that-claims-to-have-acquired-three-mastodon-servers-/18

@ntnsndr Great, I figured you might as you follow the Medium posts from Mask

@Jollyspaniard that's what we do!

@loshmi social.coop is pay what you want. But the basic expectation is that those who can should pay. It isn't a lot.

@ntnsndr Yes, I pay for it and am quite happy. I love the governance model and am hoping it spreads to other parts of the fedi.

@kidehen @ntnsndr

I usually say "One size fits nobody!" :D

@BillySmith @kidehen agreed. But once VCs and the promise of free services for ads enter a market, they tend to drown other things out. They do not tolerate diversity, since they are predicated on monopoly. One way or another, a critical way of maintaining pluralism is to build with cooperative economics.

@ntnsndr @kidehen

I entirely agree. :D

I have seen what the overload of VC capital of looking for unicorns has done to the tech ecosystem since the late 90's onwards.

While it has funded many things that would not otherwise have been made, it also funded a lot things that should not have been made... :D

Too many stupid ideas created specifically for the Pump'N'Dump IPO's. :(

@ntnsndr @kidehen

The search-for-unicorns also leads to opportunities that could return a reasonable ROEI but not a monopolistic unicorn, being ignored and refused funding.

It's incredibly wasteful, and i'm still trying to find a way around this situation.

It's part of why i am here. :D

@BillySmith,

The #Fediverse opens up a new frontier for both funding models and the kinds of ventures that get funded.

Fundamentally, it provides the missing infrastructure for the following:

1. Evolving Advertising i.e., making unobtrusive modalities an option

2. Evolving data monetization via new concepts e.g., #Web native ticketing using existing non-fungible tokens like #X509 certificates (driven by #DPKI rather than centralized #PKI)

3. New venture structures

/cc @Mastodon @ntnsndr

@kidehen @BillySmith I think the dynamics are very similar. ActivityPub is a protocol much like email and the Web in its structure: clients and servers. It is perfectly capture-able with the same tactics.

And Web3 is no different. VC is all over there. New funding models have not prevailed over it there yet either.

@ntnsndr @kidehen

I've already seen it being presented as a new funding model, but continuing the same old behaviour.

One ICO was aimed at providing funding for organisations that wanted to buy CNC machines for digital fabrication, but 60% of the tokens had been pre-assigned to the VC fund that was backing the ICO, so the funding was only lining the VC's bank accounts, and not going towards paying for the CNC machines, as was promised... :(

@ntnsndr @kidehen

One method that does work, and is compliant with the FSA reg's in the UK, is Bond Issues.

The Ecological Land Coop used these as a way of buying the farm land for starting up farming coop's.

https://ecologicalland.coop/

They use Ethex for Fundraising and Compliance with the FSA reg's.

https://www.ethex.org.uk/

@kidehen @ntnsndr @Mastodon

This is just another version of the Centralisation/Decentralisation debate that's been going on in computer circles for generations.

Kropotkin wrote about a shiny new decentralised technology that would liberate the masses from the tyranny of the warlords in the 1890's/1900's. He was talking about the invention of the electric motor... :D

@BillySmith @kidehen @Mastodon where did he write about that? I'm on a Kropotkin ki k right now:)

@ntnsndr @kidehen @Mastodon

I'm not sure which book/article it was.

I only read some quotes, and enough of the extract to make sure that it wasn't being taken out of context.

I think it was around the time he wrote the Conquest of Bread, as he mentioned electrification of the flour grinders.

@BillySmith @ntnsndr @Mastodon @kidehen

@BillySmith @kidehen @Mastodon I was struck reading Mutual Aid how much it reminds me of Graeber/Wengrow's Dawn of Everything in some respects.

@ntnsndr @kidehen @Mastodon

I haven't read either of those. :D

TY for the recc. :D

@kidehen @ntnsndr @Mastodon

Yes! :D

There was also the thin-client/fat-client debate, that became subsumed by the loosely-coupled web-services approach. :D

@jtr great! There is so much more to the fediverse than just lil ol Mastodon

@ntnsndr Looking forward to exploring it! One thing I’m keen to think about with others: how could a social media platform be defined and produced democratically? I know that’s far from the current reality with Mastodon, but I can imagine a future where members of the platform can contribute to and vote on feature specs / user stories / etc to prioritize what gets developed

@jtr I don't think there's an easy answer, and the best answer is probably "lots of different ways." But my starting point would be to read @schock on #designjustice :)

@ntnsndr @schock thanks! Will follow :)

@seanderson @ntnsndr cool! I was part of some #participatorydesign panels for a neighborhood grocery coop a few years ago and loved the experience. I’d love to hear about anyone who’s used it for technology design, or who is thinking about platforms / tools for operationalizing it in a distributed setting

@whetstone I would be suspect until they do:)

@ntnsndr not necessary i this case, i think. small instance, and they’ve said it isn’t a financial strain now but they’ll ask if it becomes so.

@whetstone ah okay! That's good enough. At least the conversation is happening. The economics is explicit rather than an under the table swindle. Keep making sure that conversation continues.

@nancywisser your mega-instance is managed by @Gargron. See his Patreon.

@heinragas that is super nice of you. Hope none of them get super famous and start hogging resources;) But in the meantime what you're doing is a far, far cry from what I am warning about. That is actual friendship in action.

@ntnsndr I think I'm safe on the fame issue. ;)
And two of 'my' users even covered two months of expenses for me, which they didn't have to, but it was gratefully received.
And yes, it's not what you meant, but I do think it's a good model: small groups of friends banding together. If all ten of them pitch in a euro per month, you already cover the costs.

@nazgul @guacamayan That is the question. How do we do global justice when we aren't outsourcing it to extractive corporations? Now we are talking! This is why the fediverse is so great, because finally these questions are ours to explore and answer. And who is "we"? Who is not here but should be?

#Socialcoop starts at £1/month, with the option of not paying. We have thought about these questions, but we don't pretend to have resolved them.

I could imagine different answers...

@nazgul @guacamayan like, for instance:

* dues weighted according to local cost of living or median income, so wealthier-country people pay a subsidy

* local instances priced lower due to lower local labor and server costs

* instances attached to local utility infrastructure, like internet cooperatives or state power companies

* global universal basic income that levels access to purchasing power and redistributes wealth downward rather than upward

@nazgul @guacamayan global economic injustice is real, and it is unlikely the fediverse will solve it. But we need to design against that injustice. And, at last, we have a real opportunity to do that.

I would rather hold that challenge than cede it to Zuckerberg and Dorsey again.

@ntnsndr @guacamayan

Absolutely.
It’s certainly possible (in fact, likely) that someone will create an ad-supported instance. (I wonder how many instances it will block it in principal). But my hope is that civil societies and other non-profits will sponsor instances that are specifically aimed at marginalized communities. Which also means they’ll have the desire to provide the security and support required.

That’s a model of social media, and in fact app use in general, that would make for a much nicer future for the internet than the current dystopian model.

@Kaker I think you are misunderstanding me. Our instance is self-governed, and the whole point of this is to encourage self-governance among users of their instances.