- cross-posted to:
- lemmyworld@lemmy.world
- div0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- lemmy@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- lemmyworld@lemmy.world
- div0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- lemmy@lemmy.ml
An open source project the size of Lemmy needs constant work to manage the project, implement new features and fix bugs. Dessalines and I work full-time on these tasks and more. As there is no advertising or tracking, all of our work is funded through donations. Unfortunately the amount of donations has decreased to only 2000€ per month. This leaves only 1000€ per developer, which is not enough to pay my bills. With the current level of donations I will be forced to find another job, and drastically reduce my contributions to Lemmy. To avoid this outcome and keep Lemmy growing, I ask you to please make a recurring donation:
Liberapay | Ko-fi | Patreon | OpenCollective | Crypto
If you want more information before donating, consider the comparison with Reddit. It began as startup funded by rich investors. The site is managed by corporate executives who over time have become more and more disconnected from normal users. Their main goal is to make investors happy and to make a profit. This leads to user-hostile decisions like firing the employee responsible for AMAs, blocking third-party apps and more. As Reddit is a single website under a single authority, it means all users need to follow the same rules, including ridiculous ones like censoring the name “Luigi”.
Lemmy represents a new type of social media which is the complete opposite of Reddit. It is split across many different websites, each with its own rules, and managed by normal people who actually care about the users. There is no company and no profit motive. Much of the work is carried out by volunteer admins, mods and posters, who contribute out of enthusiasm and not for money. For users this is great as there is no advertising nor tracking, and no chance of takeover by a billionaire. Additionally there are no builtin political or ideological restrictions. You can use the software for any purpose you like, add your own restrictions or scrutinize its inner workings. Lemmy truly belongs to everyone.
Dessalines and I work fulltime on Lemmy to keep up with all the feature requests, bug reports and development work. Even so there is barely enough time in the day, and no time for a second job. Previously I sometimes had to rely on my personal savings to keep developing Lemmy for you, but that can’t go on forever. We partly rely on NLnet for funding, but they only pay for development of new features, and not for mandatory maintenance work. The only available option are user donations. To keep it viable donations need to reach a minimum of 5000€ per month, resulting in a modest salary of 2500€ per developer. If that goal is reached Dessalines and I can stop worrying about money, and fully focus on improving the software for the benefit of all users and instances. Please use the link below to see current donation stats and make your contribution! We especially rely on recurring donations to secure the long-term development and make Lemmy the best it can be.
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Update: For those of you who want to support Lemmy development without financing the hosting of lemmy.ml, know that the hosting is paid exclusively through OpenCollective. You can see the payment details at this link. This means donations through all other platforms (Liberapay, Ko-fi, Patreon, Crypto) are exclusively for Lemmy development, and not a single cent goes to lemmy.ml hosting.
Edit: Liberapay is the preferable donation option, as it has very low fees and is also open source.
Donated on Liberapay.
As others have said, this is financing software development, not a political campaign. I first learned of the fediverse when Reddit removed 3rd party apps, and I felt like my eyes were opened. This is what I want the internet to be, decentralized and running on open source software, and I’m sure I’m far from being alone in this, so thanks to the devs for that.
Also Jerboa is great!
Lemmy default UI should seriously consider a daily donation goal, similar to old Reddit. Implement a backend API to fetch the daily amount needed and the current amount donated, and stick it on the right hand side by all the trending communities. As a stats nerd, this would seriously motivate me to donate more.
I love lemmy the project. But there has too much political arguments in some communities and they will hate you if you aren’t 100% agree with them. Even the post and the group/community are not political, comments will turn it to political. I am kind of tired(although I know some ppl are thrilled with political arguments). There is not much the devs can do, but the content does affect the user experience quite a lot.
Nevertheless, thanks for all the hard work, nutomic and dessalines. I will donate.
lemmy.ml is run by the developers?
Yes, it’s the “original” instance
From what I can see, what’s stopping a lot of people donating is the fact that donations cover .ml as well, I personally think this is a non-issue, because .ml doesn’t cost much to run (from what I can see).
Would it be possible to split donations for lemmy development, and donations for lemmy.ml?
There’s also the fact that Nutomic is a known transphobe, and donating to lemmy’s development means supporting said transphobe. If we could get non-problematic devs, that would be ideal. But until then, the only real options are “use Reddit” or “support a tankie transphobe.” And neither is a great choice.
Can I donate only to Dessalines and not you? Cause fuck transphobes
Refusing to make someone’s financial situation easier until they stop being transphobic is not a convincing argument against transphobia. Think about how your actions affect your side’s reputation from the other side’s perspective.
Edit: to be clear, this is not a statement on whether or not Nutomic is transphobic.
Nutomic is transphobe?
I realize that it was a mistake to post that. The transgender topic is much more complex and more controversial than I knew at the time. So I will refrain from commenting on it in the future. In any case I’m happy that there are so many transgender people on Lemmy.
Do you also think that eg when corporations celebrate Black History Month that the bourgeoisie is also pro-Black? Capitalism has a vested interest in neutering and subsuming liberation movements so that they cannot pose a threat to capital itself, and also of course, as groups such as LGBTQ+ people become less socially stigmatised, it becomes worth it profit-wise to market towards these demographics specifically as the financial hit from bigots becomes less. We can see this reverse in real time in the US as it becomes more profitable to appeal to social reactionaries, showing that any appeals to “pride” were, as queer people have been saying all along, a marketing campaign and nothing deeper.
I don’t think this comment at all suffices. If you’re going to be a communist, then you need to put the effort in to engaging with all struggles for emancipation, and that includes trans people’s struggles. You shouldn’t “refrain from commenting on” liberation struggles; you should be supporting them.
You make some good points. But keep in mind that I dont live in the United States, and I have never even met a transgender person irl. For me this is something which is only discussed online, so Im missing a lot of context and information. Case in point, I had no idea what “Black History Month” is and had to look that up. Anyway if I discuss this topic further it will be through an anonymous alt account, to avoid any further drama.
I also don’t live in the United States; do you think trans people only exist in the US? Transfemicide is an even bigger issue in the global south; for instance, Brazil, a global south country, is notorious for its high transfemicide rates, and has a strong transfeminist movement as a result. There will be trans people in all countries who face transphobia, and the countries lacking a particularly noticeable trans liberation movement will be because transphobia is so bad there that trans people feel the risk of speaking out is too great.
I do suggest that you put some effort into educating yourself and engaging with trans and LGBTQ+ struggles where you are, which will not just be “online”. I don’t know where you live, but at worst it will just be the case that the trans people where you are, are not inclined to become political militants because of both transphobia in general meaning they put an even bigger target on their heads, and transphobia on the left that is common across the world meaning that trans people feel unwelcome in organising spaces. This is not related to the original topic of donations, I mean this just for the sake of your politics. If you really can’t find any kind of organised political activity around trans issues where you are, you could at least read transfeminist texts, and tbh feminist texts in general, since feminist theory (including Marxist feminist theory) has discussed the issue of gender, gender essentialism, and transphobia for decades now. For instance, in relation to your screenshotted dm above, it has been a feminist demand for decades (rescinded upon only because some feminists decided to jump on the anti-trans bandwagon) to desegregate sports, and I think anyone who knows anything about women’s sports knows all the ways in which the gendered segregation of sports harms women athletes’ careers.
You have certainly met a trans person if you’ve met, say, 100 people. You just didn’t recognize them from their appearance or voice, either because they are closeted or because they convinced you they were cis from their appearance and voice. Presumably your country is so oppressive towards trans people that they are too afraid of being out, there are no trans events for you to attend in solidarity, or you are just making excuses for reactionary positions.
Trans visibility is not just in the United States. Out and self-identifying trans people are visible around the world, including the two largest countries, China and India. You can’t visit either imperialized county without meeting someone that is self-identifying themselves as trans. And one of those countries is run by a communist party.
These responses just sound like a reactionary unwilling to self-crit. And I don’t see much in the way of any alt accounts: the people criticizing thoss non-apologies and continued ignorant statements generally don’t have any replies.
Do open self-crit and try to learn from those who know better.
