I use Bluesky and Mastodon. Mastodon better hits where I want the fediverse to go but Bluesky is so much easier to use. Signup, UI, flagship app, feeds, and content is just so much less of a headache. But it feels like it’s a matter of time before it’s enshittified.

I was thinking about how much I hate big tech but there’s a lot of small and mid-size companies that I have neutral to positive views on. Canonical, Mozilla, 37 Signals, Odoo are the ones that come to mind. All of those have a revenue model but also actively support open source initiatives and developers. None are perfect but better than “big tech” and get more done than just donation based development.

It feels like there needs to be some for-profit companies (without ads and maintaining privacy) that can help support the development around ActivityPub and maintain apps and servers that are easier to onboard and easier to use. Does this exist?

What could be some non-evil revenue models? I pay $20/month for a blogging platform for my business website. Maybe have a service to host AP servers for businesses or journalists? Personal private encrypted cloud services like photo backups that are integrated with AP?

    • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
      12·
      13 days ago

      coops and non-profits and all sorts of structures exist for way more complex and difficult to quantify organizations

      The fact that they exist does not imply that they were ever able to serve their community/customers/users universally. You either get some people being served well at an inefficient overall cost, or you get everyone being served poorly by a broken system which can not afford to provide adequate resources to workers.

      IOW, I’m not arguing that “coops” can not exist. What I am arguing is we will never get rid of Big Tech if we keep forcing the idea that only community-owned services are acceptable models of governance.

        • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
          1·
          13 days ago

          keep investors/a for-profit structure out.

          Putting these two in the same bag is a mistake, this is what OP and I are saying.

          Context and scale matters. Even though both small and big companies depend “on profit”, the methods they use and incentives that drive them are wildly different.

            • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
              1·
              13 days ago

              Scale however does not matter.

              Of course the scale of the business matters. If scale doesn’t matter, a bunch of farmers selling their produce at a local market would be bad for their local community as Walmart.

                • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
                  1·
                  12 days ago

                  I’m saying scale is irrelevant because profit motive corrupts other values

                  And OP and I are saying that this generalization is shortsighted. You end up putting on the same bag:

                  • Small farmers and Walmart
                  • A local restaurant owner and Darden
                  • Independent commercial software providers and Facebook.

                  By treating them as equal because “both of them are seeking profit”, you are left with an economic system that is unable to grow to match the demands of the people.

                  Make an actual point.

                  I did, many times. It’s just that you don’t want to hear it.

                  The point is “Community is not enough” (I did link to the blog post, didn’t I?) and I’ve been saying since 2022 that the Fediverse will not be able to grow until is dominated by this belief “that every profit-seeking business is bad and therefore should be rejected”.

                  You can be mad at me all you want, you can be upset at this sad reality all you want, you can cry in a pillow all you need, but you can not say that the Fediverse has been a success story. We’ve had so many opportunities handed out to us to take this place and grow to become a viable alternative for everyone but we squander it every time because the loud minority of ideologues keep screaming “no businesses here!”.