I think the strongest takeaway from Cohost turning off is that it's probably just not possible to run a sustainable social media site without either subsidizing it with VC money or taking advantage of massive amounts of unpaid labor and unreimbursed se...
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I think the strongest takeaway from Cohost turning off is that it's probably just not possible to run a sustainable social media site without either subsidizing it with VC money or taking advantage of massive amounts of unpaid labor and unreimbursed server costs
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@nex3 community centers are kept open with taxes, not membership fees. No such structure for public e-community spaces.
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@drdeeglaze @nex3 I wonder if you couldn't run a site with mandatory subscriptions but on a sliding scale.
Like I wonder where the break-even point is - how much does it cost per user to develop and maintain a social site (including moderation)? We probably actually have the data on this now, between Cohost and all of the fedi instances.
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@drdeeglaze @nex3 I suspect the answer is: not much if you have volunteer moderation and automated tools to deal with spam; Big Tech money if you have to hire professionals to do it all manually.
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@tess @drdeeglaze @nex3 came here to say that.
The model that's not been tried is endowment funds from governments, recurring grants purpose made for the commons
Plus other ways to slice payments because jumping from volunteer to monetized is awkward and taboo in many free software cultures