Lemmy is like a public library of the internet: it's one of the few places where you can exist without the expectation of paying either through watching ads or through direct payments
In my city/county, you get a free card if you can prove you live here (show something with your address)
Our system will also do fundraisers to supplement the budget from taxes. We almost lost some libraries a gew years ago, but voters remade the local government and they are safer now.
Admins secretly taking money to inject stealth ads? I don't know the mechanisms too well but it'd be nice to know where the cancer is likely to start from.
I donate 12€ a year through OpenCollective. Donate here!. That's 12€ more than any other social media site has ever gotten out of me. Donations also support mastodon.world.
If everyone donated 12€ a year then they'd be so flush with cash that it'd make the Wikimedia Foundation look broke.
Yep. I was around in the mid 90's. Which was around when it became generally affordable to get internet at home.
I'd say most stuff was running from university computers though. Normal people couldn't afford to have a permanent connection (even 64k) at home and in the few places co-location existed it was priced out of reach of normal people (and so were the servers you could install).
But it was still not even slightly commercialised.
I did a 1 time donation to my instance and the devs that should cover more than a few years of me watching ads.
It's weird though because I really value the idea of supporting projects I like but I find it so hard to part with money when I am not forced. This does become easier as I become more financially stable.
I feel gross hording money at this point. I buy a lot of shit for my hobbies but I hate buying fast food and usually just buy two and give the second away as punishment for the sin.
To be honest with myself, I am kind of the same. For the lemmy devs and lemmy.world, there are 1€ / month tiers on patreon. Its not that much but at the very least its more than nothing.
They were so sinister, but back in the 80s they were just randos. There's a documentary out there about their cult. Really weird, from my perspective, because when I was like 9 years old, I thought it might be nice to be like them at the airport runnning around with a tambourine. I'm so glad I wasn't. Anyway, look it up and read about them. Then, question everything. The Krishna people, in a nutshell, were worshipping a huge drug lord and it was a mafia, that brainwashed them. Back in the 80s, and even 70s, they were just hippy dippy people. John Waters even made a film about how the daughter wanted to run away from the mother to join the Krishna people. Hare, hare krishna!
There’s a temple of theirs very near me. I don’t see many around now but back in the 90s it’s was a big thing. But they were always very peaceful here, not remotely sinister. They just played that tambourine and chanted away and did their own thing
Yeah, that whole documentary about them I saw 6 months ago was like something that blew my mind. That's how I remember them. Just peaceful people chanting in public with their veils and what not. I'm fascinated by how there's a temple near you of them! Some of them kept faith and continue their dedication to whatever they dedicate themselves to? I remember a loooong time ago when I was 12 I said to my mother in a heated argument, "I'm going to run away and join the Krishna people from the mall!" She won the argument (because age and wisdom) but I gave her a run for her money because she saw the same movie I did by John Waters.
Well now I just looked up the documentary and put it on! Whatever this faction is I don’t think it’s representative of the whole. The ones near me I think have always embodied peacefulness. The temple has its doors open regularly, I’ve never really walked in and looked around but it would be interesting. It’s also in an area that’s really blown up in value since they bought it, worth many millions today. I’m sure they’ve been offered buyouts by developers but clearly didn’t accept any if so. Just goes to show it’s not about the money for them!
A group of them came by my college every week and provided a low cost, all you can eat vegetarian lunch. Don't know much else about them, but that's a point in their favor in my books.
Taxes are not direct payments and taxes would be collected regardless of the existence of libraries.
I dunno about where you live, but where I live libraries are funded by millage. We vote to fund the libraries specifically with a tax. So if we didn’t have the libraries, we wouldn’t pay that millage.
Again, where I live, yes. If we, as voters, decided not to approve the library millage, we would no longer pay that specific tax which funds the library.
The library would coast for a bit, but would eventually shut down unless we voted to start paying that tax again.
I know this is true because it literally happened a few towns over where a bunch of dipshits voted to stop funding their library over LGBTQ books. Fortunately the library was kept afloat by donations until a millage was eventually approved to keep it funded.
Well, sure, but that’s not the point. I’m just saying the tax money that I pay to fund the library is something I specifically pay to fund the library. If we didn’t have the library, my taxes would be lower by the amount of my taxes that goes towards the library.
(Obviously, libraries are a fantastic use of tax money and I would never vote not to pay the meager amount I do to fund them.)
You might however be watching ads. And probably not realize it.
(Although, to be fair, right now we're probably much too small for anyone to bother doing much astroturfing)
Even if there was astroturfing, I wouldn't say that counters OP's arguments any more than it would if some guy came in and started handing out coupons to a pizza place in the local public library.
you can use open source apps for youtube and reddit, you dont even need to register or watch any of the ads. however yoz get promoted posts that are upvoted by bots, pretty sure its true here as well.