Gregory's Server
@mveron Caveat: if they're a non-profit or a volunteer.
Give no donations to instances run by for-profits.
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10 comments
 I guess Vivaldi is because it's available as part of the subscription so it could well be a loss leader feature. I don't see a financial relationship with mastodon.cloud or its owners, I've no idea about twit. Would you say the same about masto.host or any other instance hosting company?  @byte @atomicpoet @mveron Seems like a failure of the imagination when Twitter, Yahoo mail, google groups, etc are all right there. @davidr @atomicpoet @mveron I specifically asked how a mastodon instance can be used currently to directly profit off its users. Those are walled-garden services that you have no option but to use if you want access to the platform. If my current mastodon instance tries to monetize me, I can just move and still have the same overall access to the platform. That's the benefit of federation, and why the Fediverse isn't comparable to those platforms. @byte @atomicpoet @mveron You can move right now. What if they decide to make that hard? Make exporting your data impossible or accessible only via arcane menus and paperwork? "But the protocol!" Look at email and Microsoft. Once an organization starts using Exchange/Outlook, there's no way to use anything else. @byte @atomicpoet @mveron I fave'd a post this very morning from someone who said they "finally" got IMAP working with Outlook365. This is how these companies make money--breaking protocols just enough to keep people captured. They are *good* at it. And when someone figures out how to handle it, they break it again. @byte @davidr @atomicpoet @mveron I’m thinking about this for my company and it’s the same stuff we already charge for: tools, curation, community. I think owning the fediverse is off the table (a good thing) and that means that people can come here with really opinionated product designs (also a good thing). @byte @davidr @atomicpoet @mveron I’m not sure how true this is, but a bunch of people have told me they’d pay for an instance with professional community moderators. Not sure how big that is but it’d fit us since we think our standards are well tested and we already have a 24/7 team. |
@atomicpoet @mveron new here. What's an example of an instance being run for-profit? I find it hard to imagine how you could monetize such a thing.