Saw this proposal originally posted on Github and thought it was worth posting here and expanding on
This is an excellent idea, I liked awarding posts on reddit on my old username, probably spent quite a bit with reddit until they permabanned me for god alone knows what reason.
This plus Premium memberships would give the admins of the bigger servers such as lemmy.world a reliable income stream that would enable them to maintain and improve infrastructure. The money would go to whichever server a user that buys the awards or Premium membership happens to reside on (for me it’d be lemmy.world)
Its a simple reality that running a server with thousands of users on it costs money and time, and it has to come from somewhere more reliable and lucrative than donations
It does raise an issue in that a payment processor would be required, and a business would have to be created for that as well. Perhaps several instances could co-operate and share the payment processor and create between them an organisation or business for that purpose, there would need be some means of tagging each payment so that it can be directed to the correct instance
I want the fediverse to survive and thrive, and for that it needs some income beyond donations to support instance server costs, bandwidth and the time and effort and resources expended on battling DDOS attacks, bots etc etc
I dont think that donations are going to provide an adequate financial basis long term - an incentivised scheme or paid memberships will provide a more stable long term financial support. I was about to pay for a reddit membership when they permabanned me 😗
I don’t think allowing paid boosts/paid flairs for recognition are going to lead to the kind of content Lemmy needs to maintain engagement.
If an instance wanted to implement something like this, they could develop a system for displaying awards on the front end and just store that on a second database. I just don’t think any admins really plan on making that their monetization strategy
Sounds interesting. How is Madison handling the funding issue? Are all admins millionaires, living off the stocks they own, so they don’t really care what the server maintenance costs? If admins are just normal people, they probably do care, and in that case, they probably also ask you to donate.
Mastodon has been doing this for a bit longer, so those admins can probably tell you how successful their financial model is. If patreon donations are good enough, then there’s no need to build anything more complicated.
Yeah, I really miss the profit-centered incentives that drove Reddit engagement :/ Just donate, you get Lemmy in return.
Speaking as an instance admin, I don’t want this. It would create the idea that we’re selling something to people, and then moderating users that have either received or granted awards would become more complex.
As it stands now, we have an open donation and we don’t ask for any information about the donors Lemmy account. I don’t want to know
If people like the instance, they can donate and help us cover some costs, and the reward is improved sustainability for our instance.
@ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone Also, the vulnerable whilst being the most in need of protection and a safe place, are often the least able to afford to provide financial support.
Prioritising “paying” users by giving them special benefits and worrying about the loss of “income” if they need to be moderated tends towards a road that ends up with the minorities paying for it with their safety instead.
@supakaity @ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone
Makes my heart full to know that my admins think pretty much the same way I do about this. Doing subscription tier BS against people who have multiple intersections as minority folks is some peak online capitalist ick IMO. Rewarding and/or preferencing folks who can pay is just reinforcing more of the structural crap we face on the daily in user-pays driven meatspace.
I don’t generally agree with the idea because I believe it doesn’t incentivize (actually, it goes in the very opposite direction) the cultural shift which is needed. That is, you are the platform, you are not buying anything, you are simply supporting the platform(s) you care about unconditionally.
