The thing I love about this post and all its replies, is the stark difference in replies in answer to Brent's very reasonable question.

Bad Gardener

Refuse to accept what? That we should be grateful to those currently keeping Mastodon afloat?

If you have a way to prioritise and shortcut improvements to safety and onboarding, that's wonderful. Truly. Get going, and I'm in awe of your talents.

But for the vast majority of users, there are two gripes - what Mastodon *isn't* providing, and the ridiculous amount of gatekeeping within the system. Both are off-putting. For the former, most of us can't fix that.

Emelia 👸🏻

@mekkaokereke @Badgardener

I'm currently targeting €68k a year and I'm at €51k now, with €40k coming from just one place.

I'm working on moderation tools in Mastodon, FIRES, leading the ActivityPub Trust & Safety Taskforce, and contributing to a handful of other projects, and I'm *barely* scraping by.

I'm even trying to sell more services. I also help the Hachyderm team with bugs & infrastructure.

Bad Gardener

@thisismissem @mekkaokereke

Exactly, and people like me need to put up, or shut up. What you do is great, and if people want *this* model to continue, they need to accept that you're doing all you can.

Or, we can start thinking about funding.

Emelia 👸🏻

@Badgardener @mekkaokereke keeping a boat millimetres from sinking isn't a fantastic outcome. It's a dire situation, obviously the boat shouldn't be sinking in the first place.

Emelia 👸🏻

@Badgardener @mekkaokereke the latter would be *really* good. I can only do all that I do as long as I have enough money to stay afloat financially & pay my bills and put food on my table.

Bad Gardener

@thisismissem @mekkaokereke

So that's your next target: how to get your work to fruition. It's never not going to be about money, so either it's a slow process with an organic, ethical income - or rapid with money from potentially problematic sources.

I think we may be talking at cross-purposes: I'm not advocating for protection and safeguarding to take back seats. I've done plenty of those things. I'm saying that we need to be grateful for what you can currently do, or else put up the money.

Emelia 👸🏻

@Badgardener @mekkaokereke have a look at the latest trunks and tidbits: https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2024/11/trunk-tidbits-october-2024/ (2 PRs are mine, and I was one of two people who reviewed the FASP project outside of Mastodon and helped guide them away from OAuth for that)

Have a look at the titles of my open PRs: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pulls/ThisIsMissEm

I'm doing the work, yet only 54 people are funding my work, and I talk about my work & market myself A LOT.

mekka okereke :verified:

@Badgardener @thisismissem

Fair question!

So I'll answer it. I refuse to accept that people who work on Fediverse trust & safety full time should have to be inches from financial disaster all the time. As an industry we have to find other ways to pay for stuff. Some Fedi people are so anti-VC and anti-capitalist, that they become anti-commerce, and anti-paying people for their labor.

Paying people for their labor is not bad. It's good actually.

mekka okereke :verified:

@Badgardener @thisismissem

So I refuse to accept substandard Trust and Safety and on boarding features.

Because we have the people that know how to build great features.

Emelia 👸🏻

@mekkaokereke @Badgardener right now it's mostly having the time to both build, review and ship the features.

As mentioned in another thread I've been working on a bunch of these onboarding and moderation features we'll need in the coming months separately, along with others.

can

@mekkaokereke @Badgardener @thisismissem I think it’s more about finding a good revenue model that does not compromise the longer term viability of building an open network vs. people being anti getting paid. There are successful examples of this being done with donations as the main revenue source, such as Wikipedia.

I am not sure how other revenue models can generate significant revenue without excluding people who can’t pay? Do you have examples?

Emelia 👸🏻

@can @mekkaokereke @Badgardener yes, I literally have https://support.thisismissem.social — financial support is all I ask, whether its $5/month or $500/month, every little bit helps make my work more secure and sustainable.

Right now one of my contracts may be at risk due to funding issues, so 2025 is looking very scary to say the least.

can

@thisismissem @mekkaokereke @Badgardener Good to know! Thanks for your work! I think Mastodon should pay people like you, though. I know it’s also hard for them to raise money, but still easier than for you I’d guess.

Emelia 👸🏻

@can @mekkaokereke @Badgardener yeah, maybe one day. I did almost join their team last year, but funding threw a spanner in the works, so I went independent, investing €16,000 of my own money to keep myself afloat whilst I did work on Mastodon and fediverse and built up a supporter base.

can

@thisismissem @mekkaokereke @Badgardener that’s very selfless and brave of you to do that. I sincerely hope you find some stable financing soon!

Emelia 👸🏻

@can @mekkaokereke @Badgardener hopefully! I do already have a grant from NLNet that I'm working on for my FIRES project: https://fires.fedimod.org

.

@mekkaokereke Does Bsky still scrape text and images from posts for AI and LLMs? And does that still apply to crossposts from Masto/Fedi?

Sharon Machlis

@ajsadauskas @mekkaokereke @mistergibson It's blasphemy here to want to track how much traffic gets driven back to your website from social media posts. You're also not supposed to care about likes and boosts. But most people who write for a living or represent the public want some idea whether what they're posting is resonating.
I came here because the R community did, and I like it! But I still need other platforms for other topics & likely always will

can

@thisismissem @mekkaokereke @Badgardener do you have any other source of income besides the grants and donations?

Sharon Machlis

@violanders @mekkaokereke I posted about the bridge between Bluesky and Mastodon both here & there. Some enthusiastic response here *but* also the “don't post that stuff here” guy. No negative response there.
It doesn’t seem fair to blame “Mastodon” for one user - except that kind of thing seems to happen a lot. And it gets tiring. It's nice not to have to worry about the “I'm a long-time user and you should all do things the way I say” crowd.