Lemmy - Donate
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Hello world,

as many of you probably already know, Lemmy is an open source project and its development is funded by donations.

Unfortunately, as is often the case, donations amounts are often going down over time if people are not aware of their necessity. When older users leave the platform they may stop donating, while new users joining will typically not be aware of this and won’t start donating to even things out or even go towards an overall increase in donations.

All of the services provided by our non-profit Fedihosting Foundation are dependent on the development of FOSS platforms, which we can host without paying any licensing or other fees, instead only being required to pay for the infrastructure cost. We are currently investing a small part (€50 each) of the donations we receive in development of Lemmy and Mastodon, but the majority of the donations we receive are used for covering infrastructure costs. We’re currently just about breaking even with the donations we receive, but it’s certainly not enough to cover a large part of Lemmy or other software development costs.

We’re looking to support sustainable software development for all the services we provide and will post similar announcements on our other platforms to promote donations towards the respective development teams in the coming days.

You can find the original announcement by @nutomic@lemmy.ml below:

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/29579005

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.

Donate

edit, as this was frequently brought up:

Will donations to Lemmy development go towards the operation of lemmy.ml?

It depends on the donation method used and is limited to around 2% of the minimum overall donation goal. The vast majority of donations is exclusively used for developer salaries.

lemmy.ml hosting is only financed by donations via Opencollective. All other donations go exclusively to developer salaries.

[source]

For donations via Open Collective, yes, a tiny fraction of donations towards Lemmy development will go towards the operation of lemmy.ml. The reasons for this include that lemmy.ml is used for testing new releases and also that it’s not worth maintaining a separate donation account for the instance. Additionally, it should be noted that the money going towards lemmy.ml hosting is just a tiny fraction of the funds that are being asked for. Hosting lemmy.ml costs around €100/month, which is only 2% of the stated minimum donation goal.

    • Lancer@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      This is, unfortunately, the necessary view to take. Lemmy the software is a net positive, but nobody should be giving money to support their extremism and love of censorship, particularly when it happens on what’s arguably the “official” instance.

      Numotic and Dessalines actively cultivate very toxic content:

      • Pro-Russia, blaming Ukraine as a Nazi aggressor;
      • Pro-Chinese Communist Party, banning discussion of the mistreatment of the Uighur minority or the anti-democratic takeover of Hong Kong;
      • Anti-Semitic, going way beyond the confines of criticism of the current Israeli government, on to hateful comments about all Israelis as a people, and sometimes Jews in general,
      • Pro-Communism, at times advocating for the violent overthrow of Western governments by Marxist groups.
      • Strongly in favor of left wing dictatorships, like Venezuela, decrying any discussion of human rights and democracy as capitalist propaganda.

      If you disagree with these positions, too bad! Because your posts will be deleted, or you’ll get banned, or your instance defederated, from ml.

  • ClamDrinker@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 months ago

    While I understand the moral objections people have to supporting the developers, I do think its fair to highlight how they do not treat us.

    We are not a product here to be exploited and advertised to. They also respect your choice to block ml and not to interact with them at all for the rest. I am sure I would be absolutely abhorred by the depth of depravity of your average silicon valley CEO’s hot takes, but they dont share it for this exact reason. Instead they just design their entire product and business around it, which is the enshittification we all know and hate.

    People you dont agree with having a place of their own on the fediverse is a logical consequence of the idea behind it, and while uncomfortable, is a greater good in the end.

    But to maintain that it means putting your money where your mouth. If not to them, to your own instance.

  • Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pubEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    Lotta no’s based on people who can’t stand being in a room with other people just because of different political beliefs. I don’t follow .ml’s philosophy, and I don’t care. Take em, leave em. Whatever.

    They aren’t why I’m not on Reddit.

    Remember why you’re here. If you can’t handle discourse with people who see the world differently then go back to Mastodon and save us your intolerance. Discourse is the lifeblood of a site like this, different opinions are part of being human. Grow up.

    but t-they support such and such genocide!!

    Then protest them louder. Don’t bring the rest of us down over it, not that it isn’t mostly sensationalist to begin with.

    • Deestan@lemmy.world
      01·
      2 months ago

      Lotta no’s based on people who can’t stand being in a room with other people just because of different political beliefs.

      Start by tolerating that disagreement then?

      I can stand being in the same room as people with shit opinions, even to a degree people who promote war crimes like these guys, but fuck if I am up for giving them a salary.

      If you have to misrepresent people who disagree with you to make a point, it is not a good point sorry.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
      01·
      2 months ago

      Remember why you’re here. If you can’t handle discourse with people who see the world differently then go back to Mastodon and save us your intolerance

      You’re asking people to “tolerate” support of human rights abuse by authoritarian governments like China and Russia…

      Lots of people have problems with authoritarianism, especially now.

      That’s not even getting into those two individuals personal views on things like LGBTQ. Which shouldn’t be surprising when given the stances on LGBTQ by the authoritarian governments they idolize.

      And before anyone says “they don’t talk about that stuff, look at their profile!”…

      Even if it wasn’t obvious they have alts already, here’s one of them admitting it:

      https://lemmy.ml/post/29579005/18404597

      Acting like directly giving money to them somehow doesn’t support them is ludacris.

      If their political stances truly don’t matter to you. Are you ok buying a Tesla still because it’s an EV?

  • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 months ago

    No ads and no algorithm isn’t free.

    Folks, open your wallets and throw a few bucks Lemmy’s way. I’m a monthly donor myself, and I consider it money well-spent compared to the shit show that is every other social media platform.

  • Alborlin@lemmy.world
    11·
    2 months ago

    No i will never donate , this format is just jerking off Linux enthusiast, and every time I say Linux in unusable I get negatively marked. Content on this is not so good.its many time repeat of Reddit. There is not a easy way or guide on how to use Lemmy and connect to all differn t forums within or even find them .

    In total this format is useful but not encouraging. So no donations

    • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 months ago

      Yes, .ml are tankies. They don’t have power outside their instance though. You are from lemmy.world. which means .ml mods can only ban you from participating in .ml communities (subreddits). Thy can also ban you so other users of .ml can’t see your content. But the rest of the instances will see it.

      Blocking instances depends on what client you use. I use boost, and in boost you can block .ml communities from your feed. You can’t block content from .ml users though. I believe other clients allow you to block the users too.

  • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    For those with decision paralysis, Liberapay is a great choice. They’re a France-based non-profit which is itself run off of donations which it crowdfunds on its own platforn (pretty based tbh), and the site itself is FOSS.

    Of some note unfortunately is that donations for development also go to the maintainer-run instance .ml – whose tankie position is to expressly deny genocides like the Holodomor and the ongoing genocide of the Uyghurs by China – but the costs of development versus the costs of just running the server are completely disproportionate in favor of development. With that in mind, being ideologically purist here enables much greater evils, and I think Lemmy has easily given me more than this value: donated $20 (edit: upped to $30 for drama reasons).

    $30 Liberapay receipt toward Lemmy showing $1.28 in processing fees

      • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        Addressed this in an edited-in second paragraph. Answer is “unfortunately, you can’t” unless you wish to fork Lemmy. But as someone who’s sickened to my core by tankie ideas, I still think funding this piece of FOSS is by far the lesser evil, I think I make a compelling argument for it, and I do think the Lemmy team do good work on the software side.

        If I can hold my nose and vote for the lesser evil, I need to follow that same principle when it’s not just my vote I’m casting but where I’m putting my time and money.

        Edit: I completely forgot that you could, in theory, try helping out on their GitHub if you have a background in CS. It won’t pay for the developers’ cost of living, but it could reduce the maintenance burden if you know what you’re doing.

          • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
            1·
            2 months ago

            Almost true, being Communists has certainly influenced the reasons for Lemmy as a federated, anticapitalist alternative to Reddit to begin with.

          • comfy@lemmy.ml
            1·
            2 months ago

            As far as I know their politics and views have had zero impact on the code.

            Adding to what Cowbee said, general anticapitalist politics were the motivation for their effort and the reason it is not a for-profit exploitative service. They don’t want or need to put in addictive features or ads to profit or appease venture capital, and that’s no coincidence, it’s a decision resulting from their political beliefs.

            But yes, their more specific personal political views don’t really impact the code and haven’t prevented others from using it freely.

      • Serinus@lemmy.worldM
        01·
        2 months ago

        I’m mixed. On one hand, absolutely fuck .ml and tankies. On the other, these guys have done great work. The way it’s set up, Lemmy is not at all beholden to their ideology. We can take it over at any time, and any further work they do benefits all of us, and that can’t be taken away.

        As a fellow developer, I truly believe Rust is the way to go for high pressure, high scaling software. I don’t think LW alone could run off of your average python. EVE Online is a great example of that. They pushed python forward to meet their high demand needs, and still had to incorporate a lot of C++. Reddit has had teams of engineers over decades, and in the long run I expect Lemmy to be more efficient. In my professional opinion, this kind of scaling can’t be reasonably done with any garbage collected language.

        My other concern is with sanctions. Are these guys in Russia? Is it legal to donate to them? If you’re paying by check or credit card, those institutions will take care of following the law for you.

        Overall, I’d encourage people to donate. Open software benefits everyone and any work they do for us is public and can never be taken back.

        • Coelacanth@feddit.nu
          1·
          2 months ago

          My other concern is with sanctions. Are these guys in Russia? Is it legal to donate to them? If you’re paying by check or credit card, those institutions will take care of following the law for you.

          I’m 99.99% sure they’re not in Russia. I feel like I’ve read they’re in the Netherlands but that needs fact checking.

      • Psychadelligoat@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        01·
        2 months ago

        Give your money to any other product or service

        If they want money for Lemmy then they can step down or stop being shitty mode

        • r.EndTimes@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          lmao what does step down even mean anyone can fork it and start working on it

  • NateNate60@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 months ago

    I donate one euro a month to lemmy.world. It’s not a lot but I’m not rolling in cash and I feel like the service is worth paying something for, even if I can only contribute a nominal amount. But I feel like they should have an option to take an entire year’s worth of donations at once would be more efficient than a monthly withdrawal.

    As it currently stands, a monthly bank transfer of 1 € is taken from my account and I feel like a significant portion of that is going to be taken by bank fees, whereas if they took a single annual transfer of 12 €, they would keep a much larger percentage of the money.

  • Ledivin@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 months ago

    I would never donate so long as that donation supports lemmy.ml

    Based on the general community sentiment I’ve seen and your reports of barely breaking even here, you can either break from the tankies or watch lemmy die without enough funds.

    • Lancer@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      This is, unfortunately, the necessary view to take. Lemmy the software is a net positive, but nobody should be giving money to support their extremism and love of censorship, particularly when it happens on what’s arguably the “official” instance.

      Numotic and Dessalines actively cultivate very toxic content:

      • Pro-Russia, blaming Ukraine as a Nazi aggressor;
      • Pro-Chinese Communist Party, banning discussion of the mistreatment of the Uighur minority or the anti-democratic takeover of Hong Kong;
      • Anti-Semitic, going way beyond the confines of criticism of the current Israeli government, on to hateful comments about all Israelis as a people, and sometimes Jews in general,
      • Pro-Communism, at times advocating for the violent overthrow of Western governments by Marxist groups.
      • Strongly in favor of left wing dictatorships, like Venezuela, decrying any discussion of human rights and democracy as capitalist propaganda.

      If you disagree with these positions, too bad! Because your posts will be deleted, or you’ll get banned, or your instance defederated, from ml.

    • qaz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      Are you aware that the top and bottom part of the post are from completetly different people? The top part is from Lemmy.world’s admin, while the bottom part is from one of the Lemmy developers (and Lemmy.ml’s admin).

      • Ledivin@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 months ago

        …are you under the impression that they’re unrelated?

        As stated in the post, donating to lemmy.world infra costs always means that a portion of your donation goes to lemmy devs. Said devs have very explicitly stated that part of those donations finance lemmy.ml

        • MrKaplan@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          it’s around 2.5% of our monthly expenses that go to the lemmy devs. 2% of the stated minimum donation goal would be the hosting costs for lemmy.ml. with the assumption that the lemmy donation goals is met, that would mean around 0.05% of the donations to lemmy.world/fedihosting foundation are used for lemmy.ml hosting costs.

          this was already explained in a few other places in the comments here, but in the end, even if it wasn’t directly going to instance operating costs, if you pay people a salary and they then take it out of their own pockets there is no real difference, as the money would still end up in the same place.

          edit: it has since been clarified that only donations via Lemmy’s open collective account are used for lemmy.ml hosting costs. our donations towards Lemmy development are not done through open collective and therefore 0% of lemmy.world/fedihosting foundation donations are used for lemmy.ml hosting costs.

          whether this is something that makes a difference in the end is something you have to decide on your own, but this is still the addressing the frequently mentioned topic of having donations explicitly for development rather than also supporting lemmy.ml operations.

          • Ledivin@lemmy.world
            1·
            2 months ago

            Yes, correct, that’s why I’m not donating. I don’t want to be paying lemmy.ml.

            A small amount of support is still explicit support.

  • njordomir@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 months ago

    I donated a few bucks.

    I see the controversy in the comments section, but none of us would be here if it wasn’t for the work of the devs.

    I remember internet forums in the 90s and early 2000s and I’ve played MMO civilization roleplaying Minecraft servers with IRL nazis, takies, fascists, etc. Some of those communities made 4Chan look like Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. From my own experience ml has “character” and so do beehaw and dbzer0. These cultural differences are enabled by decentralized social media. There’s validity to the idea that the sign-up process should capture more of these nuances. You don’t have to look any further than your own instance to find bad takes and imperfect admins and moderators, but they’re still the best of the best because they actually did it and the people talking about them didn’t. Maybe I’m uneducated on this and I’ll change my mind, but as it stands I’m cool until they force tank emojis on .world users.

    I do think it’s good that this type of talk happens, as it allows instances to develop a reputation.

    • Iceman@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      Good take. I find the obsession over “tankies” very fringe and on the hysteric side. Now they let perfect be the enemy of good and even sabotage the the very project they spend a some much time on.

  • Imhotep@lemmy.world
    01·
    2 months ago

    I just logged into Liberapay, and then I saw their profile pictures. Remembered I can’t donate to tankies (inb4: I didn’t say communists) any more I could maga supporters. or IDF apologists

    lemmy.ml:

    Hey but they’re not that bad! Nutomic responded in this thread:

    I certainly dont praise or support civilians being displaced from their homes.

    Isn’t it wonderfully vague? You know who expressed the same sadness about displaced people? guess (I can’t find a source/misremembered? my bad)

    You can remove all ambiguity by saying who is the unequivocal aggressor responsible for the gruesome death of thousands of young men and civilians in Ukraine.

    How’s the denazification going, guys?

  • Wispy2891@lemmy.world
    01·
    2 months ago

    Am I wrong or is the same person making fun of the ridiculous censorship rules on Reddit while enforcing similar ridiculous censorship rules on their own .ml instance?

    • bassomitron@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      Yeah, .ml is usually a giant circle jerk and often removes comments/posts that are critical of things like the CCP.

      • Lancer@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        Lemmy the software is a net positive, but nobody should be giving money to support their extremism and love of censorship, particularly when it happens on what’s arguably the “official” instance.

        Numotic and Dessalines actively cultivate very toxic content:

        • Pro-Russia, blaming Ukraine as a Nazi aggressor;
        • Pro-Chinese Communist Party, banning discussion of the mistreatment of the Uighur minority or the anti-democratic takeover of Hong Kong;
        • Anti-Semitic, going way beyond the confines of criticism of the current Israeli government, on to hateful comments about all Israelis as a people, and sometimes Jews in general,
        • Pro-Communism, at times advocating for the violent overthrow of Western governments by Marxist groups.
        • Strongly in favor of left wing dictatorships, like Venezuela, decrying any discussion of human rights and democracy as capitalist propaganda.

        If you disagree with these positions, too bad! Because your posts will be deleted, or you’ll get banned, or your instance defederated, from ml.