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.
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.
Fully agree that theres too much politics. Like you say too often about attacking some kind of enemy rather trying to understand other perspectives. For better or for worse, those seem to be the types of people more likely to use a new platform like Lemmy. Hopefully in the future they will also get tired of this stuff.
Unfortunately Reddit and their mods/admins behaviour over the years show that the opposite will happen. When the Lemmy mods are already so militantly anti-open discussion and authoritarian, they’re not going to soften up - they’ll go even further towards the dictatorship they clearly desire.
I’d love to donate or even start contributing towards the code myself, but the current environment that is being fostered on the big “default” communities and instances is like Reddit on steroids, just speedrunning to the end game of mass bans and mod abuse - and I don’t envision myself wanting to be a part of that for too long. I wiped and deleted by 15+ year old reddit account because of what it had turned into.
I don’t know the solution, but something needs to be done at a system level to give users a way to remove mods and change how communities are managed.
Maybe just start an instance where politics are banned?
Doesn’t solve the problem of “default” communities with shitty mods.