The idea is simple. A worker-consumer hybrid coop that develops, maintains and hosts a lemmy-like fediverse platform that is open sourced.
There r two pricing tiers- a free and paid tier. If u pay a monthly membership fee, you become a member of the consumer body. If u r hired by the coop, u of course become part of the worker body.
The core of the coop’s workings are direct democratic. Creating, filling and destroying job positions are all done direct democratically. To pass a piece of legislation, either one of the following conditions need to be met:
- Simple passing: Both, worker and consumer bodies cast more than 50% votes each for the given bill.
- Consumer override: If the consumer body casts more than two thirds of the votes for a bill.
Assume that the quality of the platform is as good as Lemmy is right now. Assume that the functionality is similar too.
Would you be interested in being a member? Do u think this is a good idea?
I personally find Lemmy’s current donations based model to be severely lacking from a fundraising point of view. There needs to be a better form of organisation imo.
The direct democratic consumer coop element would bring in more people imo. I’m hoping that the worker coop element prevents worker exploitation.
Do you think this is an absolutely horseshit idea? Or do u kinda like it? Or do u have any suggestions? I’m seriously considering this, which is what made me ask this here. I have a Lemmy client nearing the MVP stage which I was developing with this purpose in mind. Sorry if this is the wrong community for the post.
I first read “fediverse coup” and got exited. My answer is a disappointed no.
I first read “fediverse coup” and got excited.
🤨
I first saw it as ‘coop’ and immediately thought, ‘hell yes, I’d support a community-owned coop, but only if there were lots of fluffy chickens and a 24/7 camera on them’.
Then I realized what you really meant. Which I’m also not opposed to, if it was set up well.
Which I’m also not opposed to, if it was set up well
Wonderful! I’m working on it hard and fast. U’ll most likely start seeing updates on it (actual images of the UI and so on) hopefully from tomorrow. I have an MVP almost ready (around 2 hrs of work remaining). I’ll post about this from a different account soon!
I was thinking “Would I join you in a tiny building of scrap wood with walls made of chicken wire? Probably not.”
Same. I was so sure actually I was wondering if it was edited after I clicked or something.
I read it as “Fediverse coup”
I don’t see the lemmy model failing. So, as others, I think is more of a solution in search for a problem.
In general I don’t see any reason to leave Lemmy right now.
Also I don’t think things will keep simple with that model. I see a lot of underlying complexities that the current formula does not have.
Maybe it would be a better to try that model on a fediverse area with less success than lemmy.
Peertube is really struggling for instance. Not really on the developer side of things but on the content creators. Maybe a coop of content creators for peertube could me something that is needed on the fediverse.
Nono, I don’t think that the Lemmy model would fail either. It just would… trudge along (if that’s even a word haha). The potential of Lemmy is huge. In my opinion, we should totally push to get more and more users in. In other words, I think we should actively compete with corporate social media. Why?
For one, corporate social media is exploitative af. I wouldn’t want my mum on that, with all of her data being stolen by the overlords. As for Lemmy, as much as I love the devs and the amazing work that they do, they are kinda like benevolent dictators. What they want to work wouldn’t always overlap with what their donors want them to work on. Of course, they have the right to not involve donors. They are working for peanuts right now. But because of this financial inefficiency going on here, development isn’t fast enough. My mum would find it very hard to use Lemmy for instance.
I would like my mum to be on this platform. I would like her to see how cool it is. However, for that to happen, money needs to flow here. We need more developers (who get respectable salaries). The model that I’m proposing would ensure both, workers’ and consumers’ rights here. My hypothesis is that consumers would be more interested to put in money in a platform that they can democratically participate in. Workers would like to work in a platform where they too can participate democratically and earn respectable amounts of money.
If we have to make this competitive, then I believe that we would have to adopt the above model. The donations based model just seems too chill to take on the corporations imo.
Depends on the size of the flock in the coop
English is not my first language and I got so confused with this word. So should it be co-op or is coop short for cooperative? Because coop is for chickens, right?
Yes, it’s short for “cooperative”. All of “coop”, “co-op”, and “coöp” are all technically correct (historically cooperative was spelled coöperative and co-operative), but co-op is probably the best to use because “coop” usually refers to chicken coops.
In English the ‘base’ of the word is ‘operate’. Co, an affix ( prefix ) modifies operate and means something like ‘operate together’, and can even be written as co-operative ( noun ) or co-operate ( verb, but antiquated in my opinion ) .
So it’s usually written without the dash, but when it’s shorted to ‘coop’ I think it’s best to use the dash as it removes ambiguity.
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I’d kick a couple of bucks towards a membership. I’m pretty sure I’ve dropped cash on my favourite instances at some point.
I’d be surprised if that kind of model could pay competitive developer salaries. Existing media platforms got started with mad VC money until they had a user base large enough to justify huge ad spends.
Awh that’s nice of u. Thanks for donating n keeping these platforms alive :).
I’d be surprised if that kind of model could pay competitive developer salaries.
Same lol. Although I’m trying not to be too pessimistic. Perhaps a little bit of nagging (like Wikipedia does), visual funding meters, the idea of a cooperative social media platform instead of a corporate owned one and so on might raise enough money to give acceptable salaries to devs. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
lemmy.sdf.org is run by SDF Public Access Unix System, which might be somewhat similar, but I don’t know the details of their structure.
I’ve seen coop models working kiiiiinda okay for server maintenance. I was talking more in terms of raw development + maintenance. Lemmy needs SO MANY features, but simply lacks funds to hire devs to get stuff done. Sure, there r devs willing to donate their time, but still… Isn’t there a way other than charity for this?
I don’t think Metafilter is structured as a coop (nor is it federated), but you do have to pay to join, and the workers do get paid. It is being converted into a nonprofit. It is long-established and changes very little, so their software development costs must be very small.
This sounds a bit like a normal non-profit organization, but the board of directors is composed of all donors (the “consumers”).
What’s the incentive for someone to want to be a “worker” in this scenario? I assume they are still paying dues? Are they getting some compensation for doing additional work, or is it an unpaid positions?
The idea is to exit from the charity model. So the workers would be full fledged salaried employees. The end goal being to replace traditional corporate social media platforms by this cooperative one.
Sounds like Twitter blue checks.
Twitter blue checks don’t make u an owner, n don’t give u direct democratic rights to pass legislation at Twitter. They don’t give u rights to decide which feature you want next, what the membership price must be, who to hire, who to fire, what the salaries of workers should be, whether we should blow money on rebrands or not, and so on.
Getting a membership at the coop would get u these rights.
Fair enough. But I also don’t agree with the assessment that it would bring more users in. There are already a ton of instances to pick from. While democratizing an instance seems interesting, if I were constantly in the minority for instance changes, it would be better for me to save my money and simply find an instance that aligns with my preferences. You’d also need a pretty significant amount of paid users to be able to pay any sort of salary, plus the additional headache of sorting out payroll for people who are likely in several different countries. If you just wanted to offset server costs that would be significantly smaller in scope, but then no paid mods.
I’m not saying don’t try it (anakin), it could maybe be pretty cool, but it seems like a long shot to me personally.
But I also don’t agree with the assessment that it would bring more users in.
Yea, I’m also not that confident about this point. I guess experimentation is the only way to find out haha.
While democratizing an instance seems interesting, if I were constantly in the minority for instance changes, it would be better for me to save my money and simply find an instance that aligns with my preferences.
Fair point. Although this is more than instance management. It’s software development with an instance as a bonus. The biggest legislation would be to do with software development - which feature to develop first, when to hire devs, how much to pay, who to hire and so on. Considering that it’s a big project, I don’t think u would get that many other instances to just shift ur donations towards.
You’d also need a pretty significant amount of paid users to be able to pay any sort of salary
True. That’s y I’m kinda considering approaching unions, political parties, other cooperatives n so on to give em a custom branded instance (including an app and so on). That way, we could get a better scale. Again, it’s kinda all up in the air now. We would get data regarding this only after I start approaching people and spreading the idea.
additional headache of sorting out payroll for people who are likely in several different countries
Eh that would happen if the worker and consumer bodies vote to do that. I don’t see why they would do that in the beginning, when resources r so strapped.
I’m not saying don’t try it (anakin), it could maybe be pretty cool, but it seems like a long shot to me personally.
Yeah… I guess actually trying it would give a better insight. I’m a little hopeful tbh. If the product is good and useful, then getting funds for it is a communication issue, which is solvable.
