An open source project the size of Lemmy needs constant work to manage the project, implement new features and fix bugs. Dessalines and I work full-time on these tasks and more. As there is no advertising or tracking, all of our work is funded through donations. Unfortunately the amount of donations has decreased to only 2000€ per month. This leaves only 1000€ per developer, which is not enough to pay my bills. With the current level of donations I will be forced to find another job, and drastically reduce my contributions to Lemmy. To avoid this outcome and keep Lemmy growing, I ask you to please make a recurring donation:

Liberapay | Ko-fi | Patreon | OpenCollective | Crypto

If you want more information before donating, consider the comparison with Reddit. It began as startup funded by rich investors. The site is managed by corporate executives who over time have become more and more disconnected from normal users. Their main goal is to make investors happy and to make a profit. This leads to user-hostile decisions like firing the employee responsible for AMAs, blocking third-party apps and more. As Reddit is a single website under a single authority, it means all users need to follow the same rules, including ridiculous ones like censoring the name “Luigi”.

Lemmy represents a new type of social media which is the complete opposite of Reddit. It is split across many different websites, each with its own rules, and managed by normal people who actually care about the users. There is no company and no profit motive. Much of the work is carried out by volunteer admins, mods and posters, who contribute out of enthusiasm and not for money. For users this is great as there is no advertising nor tracking, and no chance of takeover by a billionaire. Additionally there are no builtin political or ideological restrictions. You can use the software for any purpose you like, add your own restrictions or scrutinize its inner workings. Lemmy truly belongs to everyone.

Dessalines and I work fulltime on Lemmy to keep up with all the feature requests, bug reports and development work. Even so there is barely enough time in the day, and no time for a second job. Previously I sometimes had to rely on my personal savings to keep developing Lemmy for you, but that can’t go on forever. We partly rely on NLnet for funding, but they only pay for development of new features, and not for mandatory maintenance work. The only available option are user donations. To keep it viable donations need to reach a minimum of 5000€ per month, resulting in a modest salary of 2500€ per developer. If that goal is reached Dessalines and I can stop worrying about money, and fully focus on improving the software for the benefit of all users and instances. Please use the link below to see current donation stats and make your contribution! We especially rely on recurring donations to secure the long-term development and make Lemmy the best it can be.

Donate

  • Nutomic@lemmy.ml
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    26 days ago

    Update: For those of you who want to support Lemmy development without financing the hosting of lemmy.ml, know that the hosting is paid exclusively through OpenCollective. You can see the payment details at this link. This means donations through all other platforms (Liberapay, Ko-fi, Patreon, Crypto) are exclusively for Lemmy development, and not a single cent goes to lemmy.ml hosting.

    Edit: Liberapay is the preferable donation option, as it has very low fees and is also open source.

      • Nutomic@lemmy.mlOPM
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        26 days ago

        The real devs are locked into a server room with appropriate supplies of food and caffeine. So dont worry about them.

        Yearly or weekly doesnt make a big difference so whatever works for you. Depending on the platform small donations may have higher fees though.

      • UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml
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        25 days ago

        I advise you to consider the weekly pledge over the one time donation. It would be a better course of action as it might help them plan ahead.

        Also, I’m a caveman, so I would advise against following my advice

      • Nutomic@lemmy.mlOPM
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        26 days ago

        Then you can donate via Opencollective. But honestly it doesnt matter, because lemmy.ml hosting is already covered, and is very cheap compared to developer salaries.

    • vxx@lemmy.world
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      26 days ago

      Who are the developers and what instance are they affiliated with?

  • Dessalines@lemmy.mlM
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    27 days ago

    If I didn’t respond to anyone below, thank you. It means a lot, and makes the years of work I’ve spent on lemmy feel worthwhile and important.

  • Joe Bidet@lemmy.ml
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    27 days ago

    NB: also don’t beat yourself down if you cannot be contributing financially: there are many ways to contribute to the community by posting, commenting, reporting, moderating, and overall just being active and nice ;) your presence and participation here already means a lot!

    • Joe Bidet@lemmy.ml
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      27 days ago

      Even taking time for +1 and -1 content is useful and counts as active contribution!

    • Dessalines@lemmy.mlM
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      27 days ago

      Yep, instance admins and mods need your support also. It takes a lot of work to keep an instance free of trolls, and its a thankless job.

  • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
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    28 days ago

    Lemmy default UI should seriously consider a daily donation goal, similar to old Reddit. Implement a backend API to fetch the daily amount needed and the current amount donated, and stick it on the right hand side by all the trending communities. As a stats nerd, this would seriously motivate me to donate more.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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    27 days ago

    Chipping in a bit (30CAD quarterly). I really owe it to your and dessalines’ work, having been here for over 2 years now.

    • Nutomic@lemmy.mlOPM
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      26 days ago

      I actually got in contact with them yesterday, will probably have a meeting soon to discuss how we can work together with them.

  • pedroapero@lemmy.ml
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    27 days ago

    Sent a modest amount of XMR (do so from time to time). Thank you for all the work!

    • TheOubliette@lemmy.ml
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      27 days ago

      Exactly.

      I will consider contributing financially to Dessalines but not nutomic so long as they spread and maintain reactionary positions against trans people. To be honest I’m even on the fence about Dessalines for maintaining a public relationship with nutomic in light of this.

      “Give money to a transphobe so we can have open source Reddit” doesn’t have a great ring.

    • dullbananas (Joseph Silva)@lemmy.ca
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      26 days ago

      Refusing to make someone’s financial situation easier until they stop being transphobic is not a convincing argument against transphobia. Think about how your actions affect your side’s reputation from the other side’s perspective.

      • marcie (she/her)@lemmy.ml
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        25 days ago

        I don’t give a fuck about convincing transphobes, I believe they should all be thrown off a cliff along with every other kind of bigot. Obviously, I will not pay a transphobe if I can avoid it.

      • TheOubliette@lemmy.ml
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        24 days ago

        Rejecting someone that aligns with oppression is a great way to build against oppression, actually. Do you think Jewish Germans should have donated to the Nazis to build up “good faith” with them? Surely if they just acted like, “good Jews” they would have been spared, right?

        This logic is typical status quo liberalism that tells you to tut-tut every oppressed group for not fighting back “the right way”. Of course, liberals have never succeeded using the methods they suggest, so this really amounts to telling the oppressed to shut up and die. This talking point is promulgated so that you and others will refuse to work in solidarity with the oppressed. Don’t let yourself be manipulated this way.

          • TheOubliette@lemmy.ml
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            24 days ago

            Why do I need to prove a negative? Get your fallacies in order! I also recommend against relying so much on trying to identity fallacies, as we are not exactly engaging in formal modus tollens here and what I am saying to you is intended to get you to critically engage with what you are saying, not be an unassailable treatise on resistance that covers every eventuality.

            Societal liberalism reinforces the status quo, or I should really say, reinforces capitalism, and that tends to mean reproducing oppressions that can be leveraged by capital. Even the existence of reactionaries who marginalize others is often in the interests of caputal. “Don’t blame the people firing you for losing your job, it must be the immigrants doing this to you! Hey, don’t complain about your life, at least you’re not [oppressed group]” These serve very practical functions for disunity among people that could otherwise find common ground against the interests of capital.

            The liberal tut-tutting of what is supposedly ineffective opposition is part of this as well. It comes from op-eds from ghoulish warmongers, those complicit in genocide, and a political class invested in you not actually aligning against oppressors in any meaningful way. Notice the complete lack of action from yourself in doung anything about this transphobe. Just pushing against those who do. Ask yourself what role you are playing.

              • TheOubliette@lemmy.ml
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                24 days ago

                The information is in the thread you are replying to. And no, you actually don’t, becauae what we are discussing is your paternalistic liberal response to others refusing to donate to a transphobe and then your leaning on debatebro fallacy misunderstandings when I explained what was wrong with it.

                If you can’t self-criticize and adapt then just don’t respond.

  • Padook@feddit.nl
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    27 days ago

    Thanks for the reminder, sometimes I forget to support these important pieces of software.

    I feel like us old people need to give a little extra to pay for the next generation of young tinkerers so things can continue to be free