Why YSK: Getting along in a new social environment is easier if you understand the role you’ve been invited into.
It has been said that “if you’re not paying for the service, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.”
It has also been said that “the customer is always right”.
Right here and now, you’re neither the customer nor the product.
You’re a person interacting with a website, alongside a lot of other people.
You’re using a service that you aren’t being charged for; but that service isn’t part of a scheme to profit off of your creativity or interests, either. Rather, you’re participating in a social activity, hosted by a group of awesome people.
You’ve probably interacted with other nonprofit Internet services in the past. Wikipedia is a standard example: it’s one of the most popular websites in the world, but it’s not operated for profit: the servers are paid-for by a US nonprofit corporation that takes donations, and almost all of the actual work is volunteer. You might have noticed that Wikipedia consistently puts out high-quality information about all sorts of things. It has community drama and disputes, but those problems don’t imperil the service itself.
The folks who run public Lemmy instances have invited us to use their stuff. They’re not business people trying to make a profit off of your activity, but they’re also not business people trying to sell you a thing. This is, so far, a volunteer effort: lots of people pulling together to make this thing happen.
Treat them well. Treat the service well. Do awesome things.
People should also remember that it costs money for these servers to exist. So if you enjoy using it, try to support the service by donating to your instance, contributing to open source projects, spreading the gospel, etc.
Couldn’t agree more, we need to continue to attract the kind of people who would really be able to help grow this kind of community, so if you have friends you think would like this, try talking to them.
Drop a couple bucks into support the admins and servers - think about streaming services you pay for and use less. $5-10/month to donate to a service you are using daily is pretty cheap considering.
I see a lot of people willing to support the servers, but little conversation on how to support the admins. I support a living (and competitive) wage for folks, and don’t think instance admins should be doing this work for free. If you set up your own tiny instance for your family, sure, I bet you won’t be charging your family for it, but a huge instance with constant needs and a bunch of strangers is a totally different thing. Just donating toward server costs does not allow admins to pay their personal bills, while they put in hours of work to keep this place going. So, I appreciate you for including “admins” in the support needs!
I know a lot of people hate it but I wonder if crypto/digital donation would work. All you would need is a separate wallet setup to pay the host every month. Maybe even have a graph/chart showing how much is in the wallet vs how much the monthly bill is.
I’m dirt poor but I’ve donated to Wikipedia at least three times now. I use that website so often, it’s changed my life.
Beehaw has a periodic financial update. It would be great if each instance had a similar kind of update so that we can understand what is needed and where to help.
Eh, I like free software the same way I like free beer - I don’t ever have to pay for it, and no one can compel me to. The beauty of community projects and free software. I enjoy being a freeloader, thanks very much. I will contribute by making this an active project with my posts.
Right, and no one is even attempting to compel you to. In my opinion, this is one of those “within your means” kind of thing. If you went to your friends house, hung out, and drank his beer every weekend, month after month, his reaction might depend on your ability to contribute. If he knew you struggled to make ends meet, he might be just fine with it, especially if you tried to help out in other ways. He you make more money than he does, and he was the one scraping by, he might get resentful. Either way, he can’t compel you, but one is kind of shitty.
Some of us have more ability to financially support than others, and that’s fine. Last night I made a donation to the developers and another to my instance admins. I’m thinking about making that automatic monthly, but we’ll see. The point is, I think it’s fine if this is a bit socialistic, with some paying a lot, some paying a little, and others not paying at all, as long as the community is able to thrive. By the same token, some instance owners will likely consider it a hobby and not need/want any donations, while some others won’t be able to support growth without them.
Well, I will sound immensely selfish, and maybe it’s because I’ve been so used to “free everything” on the Internet, but I will never pay for an online service ever. I pirate all my books, all my TV shows, and use scripts and archive.is to read online newspapers and magazines for free. Life costs so much money already, I will never ever feel bothered to actually donate to an online service or free software.
If Lemmy.world goes down due to lack of funds, no problem from me. I’ll join a different instance and carry on. Or go back to Reddit.
I’ll happily admit to being a loafer on the Internet. I expect little from my services so long as I don’t have to pay shit for it.
I understand this position - I used to be of the “it’s the internet, steal anything that isn’t nailed down” mentality too.
And I still have a lot of that, to be fair. But COVID taught me a general lesson that I’ve been trying to take to heart: if you want nice things that cost money to function to keep existing, at some point people are going to need to chip in. My town lost a ton of good local businesses to the pandemic, and many others got dangerously close to closing. I don’t go out and support every local business, but shit I care about (my local independent movie theatre, live music venues, etc.) gets the amount of money I’m willing to contribute.
If people don’t do this, nice things either disappear or become less nice in an effort to secure funding by alternate means.
You’re welcome not to - the means exist where you don’t have to - but think about the declining quality of some of the stuff you enjoy and why that might be the case.