It will be an interesting time for sure. I hope it can work out in a way that skilled moderators can be compensated for their efforts. It seems like donation-supported instances for niche communities isn’t too unrealistic right now, though that doesn’t solve the volunteer labor problem. Cleverer things will probably become possible as the technology improves.
If the community server makes enough money, the mods could definitely be paid for their time. Reddit’s rules don’t apply on the Fediverse :)
On the corporate side this also leads to interesting options as well. For example imagine if Microsoft sets up an official instance run by their employees for Windows support and questions. Everyone could participate easily on the instance using their Fediverse accounts and Microsoft pays for the server/moderators.
Well it’s certainly a question of scale. I’ve seen some successful indie projects where the hosting costs are met by donations, but that’s usually when the admin/dev(s) are donating their labor. I struggle to imagine a community that could crowdfund enough for a few reasonable salaries on top of hosting costs.
Though my imagination isn’t particularly strong, so I would be delighted if such a thing came to be!
The last I want after all this is corporations to come and try to take over or spread ads and marketing everywhere. Sure, it will probably happen anyway, but I‘m gonna go to some instance that defederates from them.
I would definitely defederate if they advertise all over the place, like how I would ban them from my subreddit if they go and spam it. But if their staff stay on their own server (again think of it like being an official subreddit) to run an official forum I would be happy to federate with them so I can ask for technical support etc.
It will be an interesting time for sure. I hope it can work out in a way that skilled moderators can be compensated for their efforts. It seems like donation-supported instances for niche communities isn’t too unrealistic right now, though that doesn’t solve the volunteer labor problem. Cleverer things will probably become possible as the technology improves.
If the community server makes enough money, the mods could definitely be paid for their time. Reddit’s rules don’t apply on the Fediverse :)
On the corporate side this also leads to interesting options as well. For example imagine if Microsoft sets up an official instance run by their employees for Windows support and questions. Everyone could participate easily on the instance using their Fediverse accounts and Microsoft pays for the server/moderators.
Well it’s certainly a question of scale. I’ve seen some successful indie projects where the hosting costs are met by donations, but that’s usually when the admin/dev(s) are donating their labor. I struggle to imagine a community that could crowdfund enough for a few reasonable salaries on top of hosting costs.
Though my imagination isn’t particularly strong, so I would be delighted if such a thing came to be!
The last I want after all this is corporations to come and try to take over or spread ads and marketing everywhere. Sure, it will probably happen anyway, but I‘m gonna go to some instance that defederates from them.
I would definitely defederate if they advertise all over the place, like how I would ban them from my subreddit if they go and spam it. But if their staff stay on their own server (again think of it like being an official subreddit) to run an official forum I would be happy to federate with them so I can ask for technical support etc.
Fair enough. I filtered out corpos from Reddit too, while others might like or use these subs. To each their own.