First off, let me start by saying I’m a big proponent of donations as a means of supporting platforms like Lemmy, and their hosts. This approach, when carried out in the spirit of transparency and community engagement, can do wonders for the growth and sustainability.
Hosting an instance myself, I’m fully aware of the costs associated with running servers, handling traffic, and providing the best possible experience for users. I am Lucky that im in a position where right now I am able to wear that coat, but I am more than willing to financially support other instances where I find value (and I have), and I have no doubt many of you feel the same way. But while we’re on this topic, I think it’s important to talk about financial transparency.
As users, we entrust these platforms with our time, our discussions, and in the case of donations, our hard-earned money. I believe it’s fair to ask for a little insight into how our contributions are being used. What proportion goes towards server costs, maintenance, development,staffing, or perhaps even community projects?
My hope is for Lemmy instances to set a precedent by adopting an ‘open book’ policy when it comes to spending. It would be a great step towards fostering trust and engagement in our community.
There are plenty of platforms out there which handle donations, but I wonder if there’s one that already facilitates such transparency? If not, I believe it would be a worthy endeavor to find or create one that does.
Would you appreciate more transparency on how donations are spent? And do you know of any donation platforms that encourage this level of openness? Your feedback is always appreciated, as at some point, I may need to do the same.
lemmy.world already does this with opencollective: https://opencollective.com/mastodonworld
Love that, I will be implementing the same.
Wish the donations were tax deductible. Would donate more.
The expense descriptions are very disappointing, they’re so vague and don’t actually explain what the money is spent on
There are more details in the blog: https://blog.mastodon.world/
Totally agree! Some kind of ledger on what money comes in and where it goes out would be good. The more automation the better so we don’t have to rely on a human element to update it and raise the risk of misinformation.
Yeh. I don’t even mind big staff spends. But the concept of being open book, goes well with an open sourced, decentralised platform.
Anything that ensures honesty and transparency is good in the long term IMO
I completely agree. It would be fantastic to see instances, both big and small, openly donating to the source code developers. Knowing the percentage of their income that goes towards this would also bring a welcomed layer of transparency.
I think you raise a very valuable topic.
Obviously it’s going to be up to each Instance owner, but that cuts both ways. While we could never get every owner to participate, particularly any that aspire to being businesses as opposed to public services, some certainly should be willing to submit some basic financials.
These Instance owners would certainly gain trust and goodwill from their users for doing so. Though how you prevent fraud I have no idea. We’re not exactly the FTC here, we don’t really have investigators that can verify submitted information.
Am I the only one who think they can use the money as they please? Just do crack and prostitutes, who cares. Instances are not controlling anything, why it matters? Just keep source code open and if you are too high on drugs someone else can take over and people can jump to another instance. Just complete the tools to perform instance to instance migration.
FOSS is not normal corporate world, were you have to be scared of the people running the show.
Edit: just to make sure that single instance doesnt get too much power. I.e. meta joining can be problem. If no single entity has enough power to control the whole show, then users are in power.
I agree transparency is a good thing in this space.
There are already services that allow for some level of transparency in terms of how donations are spend, like https://opencollective.com
But perhaps there are others that provide similar tools?
Yeh. A couple of people have posted that. It’s what I would use.
Also, It would be fantastic to see instances, both big and small, openly donating to the source code developers. Knowing the percentage of their income that goes towards this would also bring a welcomed layer of transparency.
