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.
Lemmy is too small to need this solution in search of a problem.
Yeah that’s true unfortunately. But the goal is NOT to be so small always. What if we had a good, properly developed and funded social media platform that was a cooperative at the same time? That’s the idea.
Right now, while Lemmy (and the fediverse in general) is nice, it clearly lacks developmental resources purely due to a lack of funds. Most devs here are contributing on a voluntary basis.
Why shouldn’t devs get to earn a living by working on a project that is meant to do actual good for society? Why shouldn’t social media consumers get to have a platform that doesn’t treat them as data mines?
That’s kinda the idea. Not just to maintain Lemmy’s userbase, but to actually get more users who are presently on corporate social media platforms.
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.
What problem would this be solving? How would it improve on what’s already on offer? Are there any benefits to being a member or a worker, compared to a regular subscription model and a job?
These are not rethoric, I like the idea but I’m curious how it would work on more practical terms.
What problem would this be solving? How would it improve on what’s already on offer?
The goal of corporate social media is to purely generate profits for their owners. This has led to extremely addictive algorithms, privacy breaches, etc. as they generate more profits. These corporations are essentially selling digital tobacco. Everyone knows its bad, but it’s very hard to stop using it.
Non profit charity institutions like Lemmy and Mastodon are currently trying to present an alternative to this. The problem is, that they are nowhere close to the funding that corporate social media has. Also, while they are open source (a big improvement of course), they still aren’t quite democratic. Just because an institution is non profit, it doesn’t automatically make it democratic. Take a look at Mozilla for instance.
So how would the coop be better? Well, for one it would be democratic. Coop members would be able to directly propose and vote on legislation. This would give them a lot more power over coop operations. This way, you wouldn’t have stupid budget allocations like in the case of Mozilla.
Are there any benefits to being a member or a worker, compared to a regular subscription model and a job?
Worker members would be proper employees of the coop with a salary and all that. As for the consumer members, they would have direct control over what the coop does. How would this be different from a subscription? Well, in the case of a normal subscription, you just hand over money to a corporation and expect a service. How much of that subscription actually goes to the workers/feature development/pockets of shareholders is not in your control. It’s like paying taxes without having a say over what they would be used for.
In case of the coop, you would have a say over how the membership fees are used. You would be able to direct which features are to be developed first and so on. You would be able to vote on moderator elections. Basically, democracy!
If I’ve to say this in short, it would be this: corporate social media platforms are dictatorships which care only about profit generation. Non profit corporations are benevolent dictatorships. They can be good, but also corrupt. The coop model that I’m proposing would be a direct democracy that puts the interests of consumers and workers ahead of everything.
Alright. Let’s think of a random Joe, that uses reddit. A cousin, a friend, etc. What would be the pitch for them to give this coop social network a try?
For example:
Hey Joe, I know you like Reddit, check this out…
Hey Joe, This coop platform does everything that Reddit does, plus:
- U can u use it for free.
- Reddit has ads. This has 0 ads.
- Reddit’s algorithms r meant to be addictive. If u aren’t addicted to Reddit, u won’t see ads, n u won’t earn them profit. The coop platform isn’t interested in making u addicted. U and ur loved ones can use this platform without fearing that its designers intend to get u addicted to it.
- Your data would remain private. It wouldn’t be sold off to anyone. Reddit however, steals your data to profit off of it.
- If u can pay x amount of money per month, u can become a member.
- If u r a member, u get to propose and vote on legislation. U get to decide how funds r allocated, what work gets done and so on.
- U don’t own Reddit. The rich folk who own Reddit can censor u anytime they want to. Do u want to talk about forming unions? Do u want to organize strikes? Reddit can censor u anytime.
- U don’t own Reddit. U can’t control Reddit’s policies. U can control the coop platform’s policies.
- The difference is like living under a dictatorship and living under a democracy.
- If u don’t have money, u can still use the platform. As it’s not owned by billionaires (but rather working class people paying a monthly fee), u can still trust it not to become hostile and censor heavy.
It sounds like you’re selling an ideology then, not a functional product.
I’m selling both. I’m saying that my functional product is superior because it has been developed democratically. At no point will some MBA guy waste money on a pointless rebrand when it could have been spent on some necessary feature. At no point will some rando billionaire come up and say, “ok, links in posts will be indistinguishable from images”.
Again, same reason why democracies r almost always superior to dictatorships. Democratic governments work for the people more when compared to dictatorships. It makes the products n services that they offer superior.
I read it as “Fediverse coup”
Personally I prefer free range Fediverses.
But seriously, I think it’s still an extremely tough sell to get people to pay for social media. I also think this is only meaningfully effective at a pretty large scale, I think the fediverse is better with many small servers. If we do want this sort of larger scale development I don’t think “donate to vote” is particularly appealing to the average user.
I think a more enticing model I think is pay for feature work. An estimate is made for a features difficulty and then users donate (with some sort of fee to go towards server maintenance/upkeep) towards a feature and if the goal is reached the feature is worked on. This is already a popular model for particularly translations of freeware.
Interesting. Although the “pay for feature” falls in the charity trap again, no? People unfortunately aren’t willing to donate much (see the peanuts that Lemmy devs get for instance).
I don’t think “donate to vote” is particularly appealing to the average user.
Hmm… It adds a value proposition though, doesn’t it? A simple “donate so that we can keep running n developing” doesn’t seem to be working that well for Lemmy it seems.
Saying, “if you donate, u literally get to participate in legislation for the future development of the coop” + stuff like special badges kinda provide SOME more value than the free user, no?
I dunno, I can’t really think of a better way for fundraising directly from consumers other than this. A third option is offering special, branded internal social media platforms (like Yammer) for businesses, but that’s it.
I so so wish if we could have a user funded nice, completely developed fediverse social media platform that also is a coop haha.
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.
Open source or GTFO. :)
Seriously, Lemmy is AGPL. Any client you do and any functionality you build on top of it must be AGPL as well.
Of course. Copyleft ftw!
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)_/¯
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?
Co-op is generally considered more correct, yes
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.
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.
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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 might be of your interest: https://join.social.coop/home.html
Thanks for the resource! This seems to be more of a fediverse server hosting coop. I was talking about a coop for developing the software that these guys host (and a coop that might also have its own instance hosted as well).
Basically, getting a developer or two, paying them a wage to develop this stuff.
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.
As a concept, it could be a valid approach. But you need to put actual numbers to see if things make sense:
- What would be the monthly membership fee?
- What would be a reasonable SLA? If there is an outage on a Friday night, are the members okay if they wait until Monday to get it back someone online?
- What do you think is a good hour rate to pay for an admin?
- What should you pay for someone to stay on call?
- Can I run bots? How many? Does each bot count as a separate account?
I think you’ll see that as soon as you start asking people to put money and to feel like they “own” it, the demands will increase and so will the costs.
For reference, the one coop I am somewhat familiar is from Mastodon: cosocial.ca. Each member pays CA$50/year for an account. I think this is particularly too expensive. There are other cheaper “commercial” alternatives that charge less:
Hey, thanks for the response.
What would be the monthly membership fee?
I’m thinking of something like a minimum of 4.99/monthly contribution to become a member. Although I could change this amount with a little more market research. Just a quick clarification though. U wouldn’t need to pay money for an account. U can be a free user. U just won’t get voting rights, n u won’t be able to participate in moderator elections.
What would be a reasonable SLA? If there is an outage on a Friday night, are the members okay if they wait until Monday to get it back someone online?
I don’t believe there needs to be an official SLA. The coop isn’t offering a service per say in exchange of money. It’s kinda offering 90% of the service for free. Paying money gets u VOTING rights. U get a member share. U get to propose n vote on legislation to get what u want. Therefore, members would naturally propose and vote for the best service possible from the funds available.
What do you think is a good hour rate to pay for an admin? What should you pay for someone to stay on call?
Depends on:
- Availability of funds
- Need for more employees
- Market rate
At the beginning, I would be the sole worker (the MVP is getting ready by Sunday). Decisions regarding hiring more workers for x pay would be made with time direct democratically by the worker and consumer body of the coop.
Can I run bots? How many? Does each bot count as a separate account?
The consumer n worker bodies would decide that. I personally would have no issues letting people run bots that are functional in nature n those that explicitly let themselves be known as bots. But again, detailed bot policies would be made by the members.
I think you’ll see that as soon as you start asking people to put money and to feel like they “own” it, the demands will increase and so will the costs.
Honestly, I think the demands would give the coop enough pressure to take the most efficient decisions possible. They would give it a good developmental direction imo. Of course, I’m not saying that they can’t get toxic. But I think I would prefer the toxicity of a democratic legislature any day over that of a rich shareholder.
Examples of other similar coops
The coops u mentioned seem to be primarily instance hosting coops. I’m talking more in terms of software development. Development of the lemmy backend n the client by the coop would be the primary focus of legislature instead of instance policies. Which features to sanction the development for and so on.
Now I am confused, are you able to make changes to the Lemmy codebase? A fork? If you want to find a way to fund development, why not just work with the current team?
Now I am confused, are you able to make changes to the Lemmy codebase? A fork?
That’s not what I’m doing yet, although it is definitely something that I would need to do ahead.
The platform that I’m developing has a much larger scope compared to Lemmy. It’s not just a “Fediverse’s Reddit”, but something entirely different. It has community chat functionalities similar to those of discord for example. Communities would also be able to organize in person events and so on.
If you want to find a way to fund development, why not just work with the current team?
I’m achieving most of the above functionalities without altering the lemmy backend source code. I’m doing this by kinda creatively using the Lemmy Client that I’m developing.
Lemmy’s entire goal is very different from my goal for the coop. My 0 competency in Rust also makes me useless for Lemmy devs.
I’m essentially just taking Lemmy’s source code, n jerry rigging it to get the functionality that I want while ensuring that my platform won’t affect Lemmy users in a bad way during federation.
Of course, I would have to do some backend work to get certain functionality, but I can do that without touching Lemmy’s backend code. Not touching Lemmy’s code would be good for maintenance n overall development at least for now, when the only resource is me haha.
I have an MVP coming up by this Sunday, so I would start posting about it from a new account. I find the client to be quite unique n beautiful looking, n m quite excited to present it to the world now haha.
- I assume this new platform still has instances (i.e. is federated), except that each one is somehow required (under the threat of defederation maybe?) to operate in this “worker-consumer coop” model? Or are we talking about some centralized organization that oversees all instances?
- What prevents a Lemmy instance from trying this today? It sounds like this is something you want to try out?
- What does the paid tier get you? What’s the difference between the paid tier of this new system, and the donations model of Lemmy?
I assume this new platform still has instances (i.e. is federated), except that each one is somehow required (under the threat of defederation maybe?) to operate in this “worker-consumer coop” model? Or are we talking about some centralized organization that oversees all instances?
Yes, it would be federated. No, there wouldn’t be restrictions on anyone to host this in a particular way if they want to. The license is copyleft at the end of the day. The coop platform would do two things- develop software n host that software. If somebody else wants to host that software, they can freely do that. However, maybe getting coop endorsement for ur instance would require u to pass certain conditions determined by the consumer n worker body.
What prevents a Lemmy instance from trying this today? It sounds like this is something you want to try out?
Nothing. A lemmy instance can definitely try this model out. But remember, my coop proposal is not just for instance hosting but primarily for development of the software that is to be hosted. Starting something like this requires either dedicated devs, or a lot of capital investment to pay these devs before getting revenue. In my case, I think I’m a motivated dev willing to work for nothing in the beginning to get this thing working.
What does the paid tier get you? What’s the difference between the paid tier of this new system, and the donations model of Lemmy?
To clarify- the instance would also have a free tier. Making an account and operating it in itself would be free. However, VOTING rights need u to pay money.
How’s this different from Lemmy’s donations model? Well, Lemmy is a benevolent dictatorship. As amazing as the Lemmy devs are, they aren’t beholden to do what u say. Let’s say u tell them to develop feature A. But they want to develop feature B. U have two options: stop donating or suck it up and let them develop feature B.
In the coop model, as u r a member owner, u would be able to control exactly how ur money is being spent. The difference would work exactly like living under a dictatorship (which has a good dictator for now) vs a democracy.
Oook, i was thinking at the instance moderation level, you’re meaning at the software dev level.
U have two options: stop donating or suck it up and let them develop feature B.
Or fork it, add your own features, and don’t break federation compatibility (activitypub? idk). But I guess we’re talking specifically about features where that’s not possible.
I don’t know how well this would fare, because it sounds to me like you’re replacing the dev lead position with a democracy/hivemind.
Like it or not, software development often follows the Pareto Principle (20% of the devs contribute 80% of the code), and IMO that happens because those 20% think of themselves as responsible for the direction of the project. They feel empowered to have a vision for the project and work towards it over time from their deep understanding of everything going on (because they are responsible for 80% of it).
I think you would effectively be subverting that position and developer mindset. No dev could ever feel that responsibility or empowerment because they aren’t in control of the direction the software is going. They are at the mercy of the vote. They can’t make changes with future decisions in mind because they don’t have control. They might have implemented one feature completely differently if they had known the outcome of a future vote on a future feature.
Best case, people just listen to the devs expertise and let them do what they want. Worst case, the devs disagree with the outcome of a vote and the project, maybe forking it to make their own dictatorship, and a bunch of users will likely follow them.
That would be my main concern with the model, but who am I to say. Maybe it’s never happened because it’s inherently flawed, or maybe just no one has ever tried it. Or maybe it is happening right now somewhere and I’ve just never heard of it.
Or fork it, add your own features
U would have to have software development skills for that. What if u’r an Amazon worker who just wants to have a platform where u n ur co-workers can freely organise a strike without censorship? U’r screwed now.
I don’t know how well this would fare, because it sounds to me like you’re replacing the dev lead position with a democracy/hivemind.
You raise very valid points here n in the text that follows. However, if u think about it, it turns to a democracy vs dictatorship debate.
“What would the peasants know about governing a country? A country should be governed only by experts because they know what’s best for everyone”. Of course u’r not saying stuff to this extent, but that’s kinda it. And u’r right. Dictatorships have a high risk to reward ratio. If u get a good dictator, progress can be tremendous. If u get a bad dictator, u die. Democracies generally tend to be a lot more stable and last longer.
U can see the above trend in case of failure rates of cooperatives and corporations. Coops have a significantly less rate of failure when compared to corporations..
As for why we don’t have social media coops? Well, social media is a pretty recent invention. It required a ton of investment to become profitable. In the capitalist model that we live in today, equity is the biggest n easiest way of fundraising. U can’t do equity based fundraising for coops. Fundraising for coops has to be in the form of bonds n loans, which is very hard to get for such new tech.
That’s my hypothesis as to why we don’t have many social media coops running around. Take groceries however. There r retail coops practically everywhere, n in some countries they make up a huge huge chunk of the market share. Take the example of credit unions. They’ve practically existed forever n have provided much better services to their members when compared to banks.
If you’re gonna charge for social media, you have to have a pretty good incentive for people to join. Social media is expected to be free. Now, if you had a larger network that didn’t just serve social media, but a wide variety of things like cloud storage, webhosting, game server hosting, etc in a walled garden that was designed to allow users to do mostly whatever they want while keeping bots out, now that I might be willing to pay for.
I see. So just to clarify, you r saying that the incentive to vote for coop legislation, moderator elections and so on isn’t worth paying money for on its own, correct?
Correct. I’m not all that invested in social media tbh. If all generalized social media went down (like Twitter, Lemmy, Reddit, Tumblr, but not discord, matrix, mumble, specialty media like enthusiast forums, etc), then it’d take some time for me to find a new place to get news and memes, but that’s primarily what I use social media for. News, memes, and occasionally venting into the comment section.
I see. Thanks for the response! :)
