UraniumBlazer

Nono, I don't think that the Lemmy model would fail either. It just would... trudge along (if that's even a word haha). The potential of Lemmy is huge. In my opinion, we should totally push to get more and more users in. In other words, I think we should actively compete with corporate social media. Why?

For one, corporate social media is exploitative af. I wouldn't want my mum on that, with all of her data being stolen by the overlords. As for Lemmy, as much as I love the devs and the amazing work that they do, they are kinda like benevolent dictators. What they want to work wouldn't always overlap with what their donors want them to work on. Of course, they have the right to not involve donors. They are working for peanuts right now. But because of this financial inefficiency going on here, development isn't fast enough. My mum would find it very hard to use Lemmy for instance.

I would like my mum to be on this platform. I would like her to see how cool it is. However, for that to happen, money needs to flow here. We need more developers (who get respectable salaries). The model that I'm proposing would ensure both, workers' and consumers' rights here. My hypothesis is that consumers would be more interested to put in money in a platform that they can democratically participate in. Workers would like to work in a platform where they too can participate democratically and earn respectable amounts of money.

If we have to make this competitive, then I believe that we would have to adopt the above model. The donations based model just seems too chill to take on the corporations imo.

I see. Thanks for the response! :)

What problem would this be solving? How would it improve on what’s already on offer?

The goal of corporate social media is to purely generate profits for their owners. This has led to extremely addictive algorithms, privacy breaches, etc. as they generate more profits. These corporations are essentially selling digital tobacco. Everyone knows its bad, but it's very hard to stop using it.

Non profit charity institutions like Lemmy and Mastodon are currently trying to present an alternative to this. The problem is, that they are nowhere close to the funding that corporate social media has. Also, while they are open source (a big improvement of course), they still aren't quite democratic. Just because an institution is non profit, it doesn't automatically make it democratic. Take a look at Mozilla for instance.

So how would the coop be better? Well, for one it would be democratic. Coop members would be able to directly propose and vote on legislation. This would give them a lot more power over coop operations. This way, you wouldn't have stupid budget allocations like in the case of Mozilla.

Are there any benefits to being a member or a worker, compared to a regular subscription model and a job?

Worker members would be proper employees of the coop with a salary and all that. As for the consumer members, they would have direct control over what the coop does. How would this be different from a subscription? Well, in the case of a normal subscription, you just hand over money to a corporation and expect a service. How much of that subscription actually goes to the workers/feature development/pockets of shareholders is not in your control. It's like paying taxes without having a say over what they would be used for.

In case of the coop, you would have a say over how the membership fees are used. You would be able to direct which features are to be developed first and so on. You would be able to vote on moderator elections. Basically, democracy!

If I've to say this in short, it would be this: corporate social media platforms are dictatorships which care only about profit generation. Non profit corporations are benevolent dictatorships. They can be good, but also corrupt. The coop model that I'm proposing would be a direct democracy that puts the interests of consumers and workers ahead of everything.

Awh that's nice of u. Thanks for donating n keeping these platforms alive :).

I'd be surprised if that kind of model could pay competitive developer salaries.

Same lol. Although I'm trying not to be too pessimistic. Perhaps a little bit of nagging (like Wikipedia does), visual funding meters, the idea of a cooperative social media platform instead of a corporate owned one and so on might raise enough money to give acceptable salaries to devs. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

Thanks for the resource! This seems to be more of a fediverse server hosting coop. I was talking about a coop for developing the software that these guys host (and a coop that might also have its own instance hosted as well).

Basically, getting a developer or two, paying them a wage to develop this stuff.

I see. So just to clarify, you r saying that the incentive to vote for coop legislation, moderator elections and so on isn't worth paying money for on its own, correct?

I've seen coop models working kiiiiinda okay for server maintenance. I was talking more in terms of raw development + maintenance. Lemmy needs SO MANY features, but simply lacks funds to hire devs to get stuff done. Sure, there r devs willing to donate their time, but still... Isn't there a way other than charity for this?

Interesting. Although the "pay for feature" falls in the charity trap again, no? People unfortunately aren't willing to donate much (see the peanuts that Lemmy devs get for instance).

I don't think "donate to vote" is particularly appealing to the average user.

Hmm... It adds a value proposition though, doesn't it? A simple "donate so that we can keep running n developing" doesn't seem to be working that well for Lemmy it seems.

Saying, "if you donate, u literally get to participate in legislation for the future development of the coop" + stuff like special badges kinda provide SOME more value than the free user, no?

I dunno, I can't really think of a better way for fundraising directly from consumers other than this. A third option is offering special, branded internal social media platforms (like Yammer) for businesses, but that's it.

I so so wish if we could have a user funded nice, completely developed fediverse social media platform that also is a coop haha.

I first read “fediverse coup” and got excited.

🤨

Yeah that's true unfortunately. But the goal is NOT to be so small always. What if we had a good, properly developed and funded social media platform that was a cooperative at the same time? That's the idea.

Right now, while Lemmy (and the fediverse in general) is nice, it clearly lacks developmental resources purely due to a lack of funds. Most devs here are contributing on a voluntary basis.

Why shouldn't devs get to earn a living by working on a project that is meant to do actual good for society? Why shouldn't social media consumers get to have a platform that doesn't treat them as data mines?

That's kinda the idea. Not just to maintain Lemmy's userbase, but to actually get more users who are presently on corporate social media platforms.

The idea is to exit from the charity model. So the workers would be full fledged salaried employees. The end goal being to replace traditional corporate social media platforms by this cooperative one.