I’ve been talking to many people about the controversy with Reddit, why I left it and why I went onto Lemmy, Kbin and Mastadon instead. Some of my friends have commented that the control is still a problem as other platforms and it is all dependent on who owns the software, who owns the hardware, who are the admins, who are the moderators and which community or group has the most influence.

Who are these people that influence the most control on the fediverse? Are they Conservative? Are they Liberal? Are they Republican? Are they Democrat? Do they lean to the left of politics? to the right? or are they center? Are they even political? But also if they had to be would they easily or not so easily influenced?

So … for the ELI5 version of the question … Who owns the fediverse?

  • Boris Mann@news.cosocial.caEnglish
    9·
    1 year ago

    These are all good questions and lead you to explore more about what it means to run software.

    So as well as the instance (domain name / hardware server) admins, there are also the open source developers of the Lemmy software. They keep things updated and put out new features and releases. They currently have a (partial) grant from some European agencies who are making sure that open source software isn’t all built and owned by American corporations.

    It would be good for every instance to allocate some funding to the open source software they rely on.

    I’m one of the people responsible for (currently a test Lemmy instance) news.cosocial.ca. Our main service today is our Mastodon server (cosocial.ca). We are a registered member-owned Canadian cooperative. Every member has paid at least $50 per year. We currently have volunteer moderators and server admins, our goal is to eventually pay those roles. More on our blog.

    We’re also here to be a resource to anyone running services in Canada, especially if you need legal or other help. /me waves at smorks

    Back to keeping things running: the Lemmy software needs a bunch more features to scale. The moderation tools are very basic, there are a couple of mobile apps in development that are very early on. We should think about pooling funds and donating.

    It’s great to see Lemmy.ca on OpenCollective (we use it for Cosocial too). I’ve just donated as a $5 monthly backer. Thanks for setting this up!

    Everybody is different, but I’d suggest subscribing as a backer or just tossing in a one time donation to start to support @[email protected] and Lemmy.ca.

    • smorksMAEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      thank you Boris! i’ve sent you a long PM to your matrix account.

      • Grant_MEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Hi Smorks! I used LibrePay. Is Open Collective the preferred platform? If so, I will switch going forward. :)

        • smorksMAEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          thank you! i don’t currently have a preferred platform, i know that liberapay doesn’t take any cut of the donations.

    • Grant_MEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Great to see this and come along for the ride! Dang it. I realize now that I used LibrePay to donate. Is Open Collective the preferred method?