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
Of course, people should donate to make Lemmy sustainable.
I recognize that this is true of any website that is not enshitified or, more broadly, is designed to maximize profits. Websites made with libre software are the public libraries of the internet!
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.
Don't know where I read it, but I also like this metaphorical comparison:
Traditional social media is like a shop, except the customers are advertisers and you, as a user sit on the shelves, waiting to be bought. It's made entirely for revenue and profit, everything else is secondary. The shop will gladly show you an advertiser that pays for your attention before showing you your parent's vacation photos or the important post from that group you follow.
A fediverse instance is like a community garden. Nobody is a product and nobody is buying anything for themselves. Instead, everyone grows the garden together. Some people took initiative and responsibility with running the garden (admins/mods) and others joined and shared the garden with them and supported the garden with funds and content.
In the fediverse garden, there is no other point than talking amongst each other and the garden is connected to other gardens that work mostly with the same principles and the gardens "cross-polinate" each other with discussions and content and through that help each other grow even more.
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.
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.)
I just need a place to shitpost for stress relief, I get drawn into deeper discussions but my main goal is to be as thoughtless and as dumb as possible Wheeeeeeeee
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 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.
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.