this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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You Should Know

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YSK - for all the things that can make your life easier!

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Why YSK: Getting along in a new social environment is easier if you understand the role you've been invited into.


It has been said that "if you're not paying for the service, you're not the customer, you're the product."

It has also been said that "the customer is always right".

Right here and now, you're neither the customer nor the product.

You're a person interacting with a website, alongside a lot of other people.

You're using a service that you aren't being charged for; but that service isn't part of a scheme to profit off of your creativity or interests, either. Rather, you're participating in a social activity, hosted by a group of awesome people.

You've probably interacted with other nonprofit Internet services in the past. Wikipedia is a standard example: it's one of the most popular websites in the world, but it's not operated for profit: the servers are paid-for by a US nonprofit corporation that takes donations, and almost all of the actual work is volunteer. You might have noticed that Wikipedia consistently puts out high-quality information about all sorts of things. It has community drama and disputes, but those problems don't imperil the service itself.

The folks who run public Lemmy instances have invited us to use their stuff. They're not business people trying to make a profit off of your activity, but they're also not business people trying to sell you a thing. This is, so far, a volunteer effort: lots of people pulling together to make this thing happen.

Treat them well. Treat the service well. Do awesome things.

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[–] [email protected] 357 points 1 year ago (5 children)

People should also remember that it costs money for these servers to exist. So if you enjoy using it, try to support the service by donating to your instance, contributing to open source projects, spreading the gospel, etc.

[–] [email protected] 79 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Couldn’t agree more, we need to continue to attract the kind of people who would really be able to help grow this kind of community, so if you have friends you think would like this, try talking to them.

Drop a couple bucks into support the admins and servers - think about streaming services you pay for and use less. $5-10/month to donate to a service you are using daily is pretty cheap considering.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

I see a lot of people willing to support the servers, but little conversation on how to support the admins. I support a living (and competitive) wage for folks, and don't think instance admins should be doing this work for free. If you set up your own tiny instance for your family, sure, I bet you won't be charging your family for it, but a huge instance with constant needs and a bunch of strangers is a totally different thing. Just donating toward server costs does not allow admins to pay their personal bills, while they put in hours of work to keep this place going. So, I appreciate you for including "admins" in the support needs!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I know a lot of people hate it but I wonder if crypto/digital donation would work. All you would need is a separate wallet setup to pay the host every month. Maybe even have a graph/chart showing how much is in the wallet vs how much the monthly bill is.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I like this for the transparency but crypto is an open ledger, anyone can see the balance of any address at any time as well as see where the addresses where money was sent. Plenty of hosts now take crypto and most larger exchanges are tagged on explorers for btc, ltc, etc. That makes it easier for the public to keep an audit on what's going on.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I know you can see how much is in a wallet, I would prefer a visualization of amount in the wallet vs how much the server costs.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I agree and said exactly that. It would show intent to be transparent if that was setup. My point is that even without that we can still keep an eye on things.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

One problem with cryptocurrency is that instead of being coupled with mainstream banks (where workers get their pay deposited) it is instead coupled with speculative assets employed by criminals. As such, choosing to work on accepting cryptocurrency instead of working on accepting real-money donations ties the service to a crime economy instead of a mainstream economy.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Good thing criminals never use cash, otherwise you could call the world economy criminal.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

HSBC helping to launder money at the teller window with custom boxes must have been a fever dream.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I said I'd be willing to pay up to 5/mo for baconreader, this should be no different... Once I figure out the instance that really matters to me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I used to pay $3/month for Apollo - would be very happy to donate that to lemmy server admins instead. My issue is that I don't know what instance(s) to donate to given that I'm absorbing content from quite a few different instances at the moment. One of the issues with decentralisation is that I don't really know who deserves my financial support the most! Maybe I'll just donate to my home instance.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Hey! at least we have unlimited reads and writes, LOL

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I’m dirt poor but I’ve donated to Wikipedia at least three times now. I use that website so often, it’s changed my life.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I gave them some money after I graduated college. I had used them so much it felt right to give back a bit.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

They're not a perfect org bit they're very much an org I'd prefer to continue to exist

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Good for you. I like to think that every little helps.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You've inspired me to be honest. I really didn't use much of Wikipedia in high school or university but I've definitely fallen down the wiki-hole very many times and leanred things that there's no way I'd have learned if not for the convenience. Gonna donate them a fiver now; it ain't much, but it's honest work.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I’m glad to hear that! I’m the same, I don’t recall using it for school or uni, but I can’t begin to imagine how many random pages I’ve looked up as an adult. If it disappeared tomorrow I’d be gutted.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Beehaw has a periodic financial update. It would be great if each instance had a similar kind of update so that we can understand what is needed and where to help.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I like it, and it represents the spirit of the fediverse well, but power does cost money. It seems like you want to run a small hands off instance, which is great, but if it starts to grow you might want to keep that in mind.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

One nice thing about using parts scavenged from roadside signs is they're incredibly power efficient. If everything was pulling its full power, I think I'd be pulling 100W maximum, and they don't run like that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fair enough! What exactly did you find on the side of the road that actually worked? It's a fun idea for lots of servers.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My server farm, such as it is.

Fanless commercial grade sign PCs are fairly available on the second hand market, relatively inexpensive, and they're not super high powered, but they're good enough for small instances of stuff.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Cool stuff! Thanks.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

@[email protected] Something for us as well maybe?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

contributing to open source projects

You need to be careful with this point, because it becomes addictive.

It's 4AM and I just submitted a PR to the Liftoff app repo.