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Is there a good way to support the overall universe as well as individual servers? I know lemmy.world has a donation site but curious if I can support the overall universe with maybe the proceeds split among key lemmy cost areas. I really don’t want ads, data selling, sponsored posts etc.
I wouldn't expect a centralized revenue sharing scheme to happen. That becomes a singular point of failure, is ripe for abuse, and is kind of anathema to the whole space.
Small servers aren't that expensive to run. A space hosting a few dozen or a couple hundred users can probably be supported by any admins with the means to set it up in the first place. And if they're not, for some reason, then hopefully the admins are transparent, and the people that are there are actually some kind of community that can lend direct support.
Most of the groups are hosted on larger sites, though. That's where the content is. It would be nice to see them spread out a little more, but we need the ability to migrate groups to new instances before that can happen in earnest. In the mean time, splitting donations across multiple instances that host our favourite groups is probably the best thing we can all do.
Why does everyone keep coming up with ideas to centralize a decentralized system?
While i totally share your sentiment, the fediverse is new to 70% of users here, so it'll take time for everyone to get used to the idea.
I guess that makes sense. It’s just interesting to see how people are so accustomed to interacting with private businesses that it is hard for them to imagine a system that operates in any other way.
My partner's been studying the concept of habitus as part of her graduate research, and it's been interesting discussing it and how it's used in social research while also watching this same basic discussion happen over and over again as people leave a centralized, for-profit internet and stumble into a distributed, socially-supported one.
We're shaped by our social environment, and for multiple generations now that social environment has been dominated anti-social economic values. Especially in the US and the UK, where neoliberal politicians managed to rise to prominence early. So, we've seen a lot of questions in the last few weeks about how the Fediverse can be "profitable", without any distinction between profitability and sustainability. Literally, people have come up in a world that has taught them that everything needs to be profitable, or it won't survive, or it isn't worth doing.
This is similar, except instead of "profitable", it's "centralized". For an entire generation of internet users, the internet is 4 big websites and a search monopoly. It's going to take a while before people acclimate to this new habitat, and develop a new habitus in order to relate to it. Especially because so much of the UX is trying to reproduce what already was. It's all made to look and feel like a centralized website, and not just "a" centralized website, but a handful of specific ones. Mastodon and Calckey look very similar to Twitter. PeerTube looks very similar to YouTube. PixelFed looks very similar to Instagram.
And Lemmy and (especially) kbin look very similar to Reddit. There isn't a whole lot here really shoving the very different environment into peoples' faces. And on the one hand, that's why they're gaining their audiences, but on the other, it's why people keep trying to treat them as if they're something they're not, and why discussing their true nature makes people very confused. It's not like the ideas themselves are that difficult to understand, but none of this looks like those ideas.
It looks like ideas around engagement monetization, walled gardens, and corporate branding.
I have been here less than a week! Still learning!
Content creation would be the best bet. Things that get talked about, searched for, and referenced.
There are donation links for most of the bigger instances.
For now, the most important way to support the universe is to post content and engage with people!
You can reach the admin/whoever is hosting the instance, and ask for his/hers personal info. Then send him some love.
