I asked around so-called influencers why they were not on #Mastodon . Here are the most common replies:
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Emelia 👸🏻replied to Emelia 👸🏻 last edited by [email protected]
@raphael @mekkaokereke @april @nixCraft
As for is this "financial success", well, it's my full time job, I have no other employment besides the community funding, grants, and freelance work.
I don't work for any for-profit company. I meet my needs.
Note: I'm excluding from those numbers the grants and freelance work, which is the lions share of my income.
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@raphael @mekkaokereke @april @nixCraft also, for context, some of the other people in the fediverse development sector that I've spoken to about community funding for projects have reported similar figures, €12,000-ish per year without grants and other income sources.
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@melroy not really. Companies go where the people are. This place is hostile towards capitalism and ads. Even if people came here the money wouldn’t come here.
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mekka okereke :verified:replied to Emelia 👸🏻 last edited by [email protected]
@thisismissem @raphael @april @nixCraft
Hot take:
People think that the Fediverse isn't safe(yet) because of slight differences between how you see the world, and Eugen sees the world, and Ro sees the world, and Oliphant sees the world, and Jaz sees the world, and Sierdy sees the world, and Hrefna sees the world, etc.But the real reason the Fediverse is not safe and secure (yet), is that none of you can earn a stable and secure living working on Fediverse safety full time.️
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mekka okereke :verified:replied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
@thisismissem @raphael @april @nixCraft
I am profoundly uninterested in giving my hot take nitpicking ideas on how any of you should be thinking about safety. And I don't think we want or need consensus.
I am deeply interested in how we change state to where you all can earn a living working on this stuff full-time, in a way that avoids the usual "money with downsides and baggage" like VC money, or becoming dependent on wealthy benefactors who may change their minds (eg Big Tech grants).
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Emelia 👸🏻replied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by [email protected]
@mekkaokereke @raphael @april @nixCraft for full disclosure, my total revenue year to date, excluding open/future invoices is €44,960 with €4,210.61 in expenses.
So I have made a decent income for a developer based in Germany, where a less-experienced developer would make €40-45k, and experienced developers would be €60-90k.
That's including freelance contracts, bug bounties, grants, etc.
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@mekkaokereke @raphael @april @nixCraft
But yeah, the Fediverse as a whole is extremely underfunded, and that only changes with people wanting to say “I value this and I want to fund it's existence”
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damonreplied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
@mekkaokereke @nixCraft As always the judgmental crap side of Mastodon has come out. Be it content creators & or influencers also consist of minorities that thanks to smartphones and internet have been able to make money, there’s even some in poor African communities. People like MKBHD and others put a lot of hours and work into their craft. People are in need of money, they have bills and needs. I see people here saying they’ve made money from mastodon which is interesting because admins across Fedi are struggling to even get enough donations to pay their instance expenses, so that’s problematic
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Stureplied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
@mekkaokereke @nixCraft I guess, being charitable, it might depend on what we mean by "influencers"?
Down thread, you made a great point about Molly White and MKBHD. Passionate, clever people with interesting content. They know their fields.
I suppose there are others who "influence for the sake of influencing", for want of a better way to articulate it. I don't want to say grifters, but I don't see them necessarily as SMEs, and we've seen in the news some swayed for cash in this election.
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Raphael Lullisreplied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
@mekkaokereke @thisismissem @april @nixCraft
I've written https://raphael.lullis.net/community-is-not-enough/ almost two years ago, and I still believe it to be true:
- The Fediverse will only have a chance of achieving the mainstream and becoming an universal alternative to Big Tech if we professionalize it.
- It's fairer to charge a little bit for everyone than running instances on donations and relying on a few generous souls
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@tehstu Been seeing this thread in my timeline throughout today and thinking the same.
I don't know what @nixCraft means by "influencer," but
@mekkaokereke seems to read it as "anyone who has influence online" or "anyone trying to sell their stuff" and I dunno, is that how people use the term?To me, an influencer has always been someone who sells _other people's_ stuff for ad kickbacks. They're called influencers because you can hire them to influence public sentiment in your favor.
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Raphael Lullisreplied to Raphael Lullis last edited by
@mekkaokereke @thisismissem @april @nixCraft
- Admins that run instances "as a hobby" and can afford to take time and resources out of their pocket to run the servers are *bad* for the Fediverse, long term.
Not only they suck any opportunity for a cottage industry to come around and make it hard for independent service providers to come up, they also foment a culture where only volunteer work is acceptable.
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mekka okereke :verified:replied to Julian Fietkau last edited by
The terms get blurry, because often it's the same person doing all of the above.
Doing marketing for other people's stuff (aka being sponsored) is just one way that influencers can get paid for their influence. Running ads is another. Having patrons is another. Etc. But there's usually something of value that the influencers provided to their audience before they were ever sponsored.
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April The Pink ⋆☾╶⃝⃤☽⋆replied to Raphael Lullis last edited by@raphael @mekkaokereke @thisismissem @nixCraft i recommend reading up on the german medical system, ammies are sared of it because they think its "socialism". but: surprise surprise, not everyone needs to be charged for it to work. charge people by their income.
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Risottoreplied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
@mekkaokereke @nixCraft happy/funny content is great, but when a platform doesn't address awful content good enough I think that's what people are mad about.
like, they're not saying the chuckles aren't popular
they're saying the incel pipeline is too strong on recommendation algorithms
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mekka okereke :verified:replied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
Eg
Harry Mack:
Freestyle rapper (makes up songs on the spot)https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=czcEatnm0LU
He started doing raps for people on YouTube and Omegle:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DceyX6SKyAQ* Runs ads
* Does sponsored mentions (eg for Ricola throat lozenges)
* Sells albums + concert tickets
* Is paid for direct appearances
* Influences rap away from mumble rap (Future), and back towards 90s lyricism (Nas, Jay-Z, Eminem).He also raps on livestream for "tips."
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iLIbC8kt4kw2/2
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Raphael Lullisreplied to April The Pink ⋆☾╶⃝⃤☽⋆ last edited by
@april @mekkaokereke @thisismissem @nixCraft
I live in Germany. I'm well aware of how it works.
I do not want to detour the discussion into politics. We can discuss hypotheticals all night, but in the end of the day I will still have to make a simple choice: do I think that I can get 5-10k customers to pay the $29/year to get access to my suite of Fediverse services, or should I go back to find a job that can pay me what I think I am worth?
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@raphael @mekkaokereke @thisismissem @april @nixCraft that certainly happens in the OSS world, where some people yell at others for even trying to make money producing it, while in practice, a huge amount of high quality OSS is paid for by large companies
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Julian Fietkaureplied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
@mekkaokereke Very fun videos!
To state the obvious, "influencer" is (in its current meaning) a young term with no formal definition, so colloquial understanding will be kinda fuzzy almost necessarily. I ask about it because I genuinely don't know.
It seems like the term rose to prominence out of, or concurrently with, the concept of influencer marketing. If ad agencies are the origin, I'd suspect a degree of ethicswashing in the definition they'd initially push.
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@notmybackdoorbug @damon @nixCraft I have been on here for a couple of years now as my primary social platform, I feel quite fluent in it, yet I have NEVER felt the email analogy is helpful or intuitive to most people. I understand for some people it's the best analogy, but for most people, it's just confusing.