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Would you join a fediverse coop?

The idea is simple. A worker-consumer hybrid coop that develops, maintains and hosts a lemmy-like fediverse platform that is open sourced.

There r two pricing tiers- a free and paid tier. If u pay a monthly membership fee, you become a member of the consumer body. If u r hired by the coop, u of course become part of the worker body.

The core of the coop’s workings are direct democratic. Creating, filling and destroying job positions are all done direct democratically. To pass a piece of legislation, either one of the following conditions need to be met:

  1. Simple passing: Both, worker and consumer bodies cast more than 50% votes each for the given bill.
  2. Consumer override: If the consumer body casts more than two thirds of the votes for a bill.

Assume that the quality of the platform is as good as Lemmy is right now. Assume that the functionality is similar too.

Would you be interested in being a member? Do u think this is a good idea?

I personally find Lemmy’s current donations based model to be severely lacking from a fundraising point of view. There needs to be a better form of organisation imo.

The direct democratic consumer coop element would bring in more people imo. I’m hoping that the worker coop element prevents worker exploitation.

Do you think this is an absolutely horseshit idea? Or do u kinda like it? Or do u have any suggestions? I’m seriously considering this, which is what made me ask this here. I have a Lemmy client nearing the MVP stage which I was developing with this purpose in mind. Sorry if this is the wrong community for the post.

sbv ,

I’d kick a couple of bucks towards a membership. I’m pretty sure I’ve dropped cash on my favourite instances at some point.

I’d be surprised if that kind of model could pay competitive developer salaries. Existing media platforms got started with mad VC money until they had a user base large enough to justify huge ad spends.

UraniumBlazer OP ,

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⁠)⁠⁠/⁠¯

borrina ,

This might be of your interest: join.social.coop/home.html

UraniumBlazer OP ,

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.

MossyFeathers , (edited )

If you’re gonna charge for social media, you have to have a pretty good incentive for people to join. Social media is expected to be free. Now, if you had a larger network that didn’t just serve social media, but a wide variety of things like cloud storage, webhosting, game server hosting, etc in a walled garden that was designed to allow users to do mostly whatever they want while keeping bots out, now that I might be willing to pay for.

UraniumBlazer OP ,

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?

MossyFeathers ,

Correct. I’m not all that invested in social media tbh. If all generalized social media went down (like Twitter, Lemmy, Reddit, Tumblr, but not discord, matrix, mumble, specialty media like enthusiast forums, etc), then it’d take some time for me to find a new place to get news and memes, but that’s primarily what I use social media for. News, memes, and occasionally venting into the comment section.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

lemmy.sdf.org is run by SDF Public Access Unix System, which might be somewhat similar, but I don’t know the details of their structure.

UraniumBlazer OP ,

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?

davel , (edited )
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

I don’t think Metafilter is structured as a coop (nor is it federated), but you do have to pay to join, and the workers do get paid. It is being converted into a nonprofit. It is long-established and changes very little, so their software development costs must be very small.

saigot ,

Personally I prefer free range Fediverses.

But seriously, I think it’s still an extremely tough sell to get people to pay for social media. I also think this is only meaningfully effective at a pretty large scale, I think the fediverse is better with many small servers. If we do want this sort of larger scale development I don’t think “donate to vote” is particularly appealing to the average user.

I think a more enticing model I think is pay for feature work. An estimate is made for a features difficulty and then users donate (with some sort of fee to go towards server maintenance/upkeep) towards a feature and if the goal is reached the feature is worked on. This is already a popular model for particularly translations of freeware.

UraniumBlazer OP , (edited )

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.

rustyfish ,
@rustyfish@lemmy.world avatar

I first read “fediverse coup” and got exited. My answer is a disappointed no.

UraniumBlazer OP ,

I first read “fediverse coup” and got excited.

🤨

hyacin ,

Same. I was so sure actually I was wondering if it was edited after I clicked or something.

StrawberryPigtails ,

It sounds like a decent way to fund a server. It’s not something I’m interested in, but you might get some takers.

kersploosh , (edited )
@kersploosh@sh.itjust.works avatar

This sounds a bit like a normal non-profit organization, but the board of directors is composed of all donors (the “consumers”).

What’s the incentive for someone to want to be a “worker” in this scenario? I assume they are still paying dues? Are they getting some compensation for doing additional work, or is it an unpaid positions?

UraniumBlazer OP ,

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.

deegeese ,

Lemmy is too small to need this solution in search of a problem.

UraniumBlazer OP ,

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.

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