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Jerry Bell :verified_paw: :donor: :verified_dragon: :rebelverified:​

Hello everyone. I know that these are tough times for many people. If you derive value from the fediverse and have the means to do so, please consider donating to support your instance. Most instances rely on donations to pay the bills (infosec.exchange and friends cost over $3000/month to host).

Instructions on how to donate are generally available on your instance's "about" page (for example: infosec.exchange/about)

Also, I firmly believe that access to the fediverse should not be tied to one's ability to pay, and I think it's even more important for those in difficult situations to maintain the social connections that the fediverse provides, so (at least in my view) donations are welcome, but not required in any way.

And for those people who already donate, my hats off to you. You make the fediverse possible. :blobheartcat:​

39 comments
Jerry Bell :verified_paw: :donor: :verified_dragon: :rebelverified:​

Also, I woul be remiss if I did not extend my sincere appreciation to Fastly for helping us out with CDN - I am truly amazed at how fast and reliable Fastly has made infosec.exchange and infosec.space.

Brian Rogers

@jerry Thanks for maintaining a rock solid instance.

Jared Stevens

@jerry@infosec.exchange Sorry, kind of off topic -- what fediverse apps do you run? Obv. mastodon, but what else? Your mastodon instance seems to be rock solid.

Dan Goodin

@jerry

I finally got around to doing this. Sorry it took me so long.

Cait the Encourageable

@jerry

I donate to a couple of servers on blackmastodon, because my own server admin won't take any donations as yet. So I went and found a couple who were taking donations, and made a little personal contribution to them monthly. My fediverse includes everyone.

Except Nazis. Fuck those guys.

Xevious

@jerry I always wondered how much an instance like this would cost to run. Thank you for all your hard work maintaining this space for us all. I appreciate it. I’ve set up a small monthly donation via Patreon, I hope it helps and if not please let us know or DM, it’s all cool.

Thanks

Dustin

@jerry That actually reminded me to set up a patreon sub for the instance!

grey

@jerry What happens with any excess money that is over the cost of hosting?

Krupo

@grey if @jerry is ever so blessed I expect a good old fashioned money fight.

grey

@krupo @jerry based on Librepay, Kofi, and Patreon it looks like he's already getting more than $3K/mo

grey

@krupo @jerry Patreon is $1924/mo, Kofi is 1907(?), Libre pay is $861.58 per week ($3446.32/mo). If we add that up(and ignore kofi) and take 20% off the top for fees it's still $4296.25/mo

grey

@krupo @jerry just to clarify, I have no issue with this. I really appreciate everything Jerry does for this community. I'm just a curious person :ablobcatbongopause:

Krupo

@grey I stand by the GIF response, but on another level it makes sense to save surplus as a nest egg for future growth in demand or dips in contributions.

vpz

@grey @jerry my hope is that there are always plenty of donation funds left-over so they can be applied to whatever sanity maintenance costs @jerry is accumulating. Sanity maintenance costs vary, but can be quite high in some situations. Chuckle.

grey

@vpz @jerry Yeah I was thinking the same thing. I hope he's saving or investing the excess to keep this place alive in down months or when unexpected expenses occur.

Jerry Bell :verified_paw: :donor: :verified_dragon: :rebelverified:​

@grey @vpz the extra money covers surges in costs, either from needing an emergency upgrade or additional server, or surges in CDN costs, which usually run about $500/month, but have been as much as $1500 based on usage. I probably go a bit overboard on trying to make things fast and reliable and could save some more money, but I’m trying hard to give a good experience for the community.

Tinker ☀️

@jerry @grey @vpz - And that doesn't include your time, effort, and skill.

mask-wearing, socially distant entity :verified_paw:

@jerry @grey @vpz There isn’t extra though, is there? I recall you saying donations don’t cover it all a while ago, I think…

Dave

@jerry @grey @vpz I'm not even on your server(s) and I yet I profit from your hard work because you enable a lot of people I genuinely like to interact. Thank you, I appreciate it.

Out of curiosity, how large are your instances at the moment? "We" have around 10k users if which around 6k are considered active and "our" admin team has asked us to throttle donating because they don't need that much money. (Which is one more reason to love this community.)

Tuckers Nuts Resist😈!

@jerry
🥥 So well said, Jerry.
And thank YOU for saying it! 🥥

Em :official_verified:

@jerry Thank you so so much for everything you do for us Jerry 💚💚💚

x43r0

@jerry just added a small patreon subscription. Thanks for running this thing!

Heliograph

@jerry I wished there was just one fediverse donation account where a supporter could just send off a bunch of money to and then the adminverse shares fairly and as required 💝

Taig McNab

@jerry do you have a preference / get a better cut from any of your payment processors?


@jerry instances should accept donations of cryptocurrency. For philosophical consistency.

Christoff :stealie: 🌈⃤👁️

@jerry what are the metrics, assuming if 1% of users donated $1/month, it would more than cover everything?

Jerry Bell :verified_paw: :donor: :verified_dragon: :rebelverified:​

@scarletfi 1% of 16,500 is 165, which would be $165 per month. My bunny.net CDN bill for the 40TB of data transfer is 3x that on its own.

Christoff :stealie: 🌈⃤👁️

@jerry Doh, I didn’t know the numbers, thought there was way more, my bad

Jerry Bell :verified_paw: :donor: :verified_dragon: :rebelverified:​

@scarletfi no worries. if we stuck to the $1/month scheme, it would take between 20% and 25% participation

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