By the way, I'm now actively blocking anyone coming here to argue about the merits of donating to the NON-PROFIT that builds Mastodon.
It's absolute dirtbag behaviour when Mastodon struggles so much under a #TwitterMigration of millions of users.
Now lets put things into perspective. Last month, Twitter was employing 6,500 people. Mastodon employs 1 person who's working 14 hour days -- and only compensates himself €36,000 a year.
How is one guy supposed to take build the app that replaces Twitter when Twitter pays hundreds of engineers well over $100,000 to do a fraction of the work?
Yeah, other people deserve donations too -- so donate! Be a hero to the person who's running your instance, as well as the person who builds whatever app your instance is running.
And lest you think that I don't bang the drums on donations for other devs, this is not the case.
Last week, I told everyone to donate to @dansup. A couple of days ago, I told everyone to donate to @Are0h who, by the way, is making another app that builds safety features for marginalized communities. And I'm banging the drum all the time on @thatonecalculator@stop.voring.me and his work with Calckey.
But right now, I'm urging people to help out with Mastodon!
So if you have it in your heart to donate to a very good cause -- the continued development and existence of Mastodon -- contribute to Mastodon's Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/mastodon
To everyone upset that I'm suggesting people DONATE to Mastodon, which is a NON-PROFIT, you can read for yourselves what this funds: the continued development of Mastodon.
That is to say, everyone who runs and maintains a Mastodon instance benefits.
I make no apologies for urging people to donate. This isn't a zero sum game where if someone donates to one cause, they cannot donate to another. Yes, let's spread the wealth around.
But also, let's DONATE to ensure the continued survival of Mastodon because I'm really sure we'd all like it if Mastodon continues to function.
I've found that a big part of which stuff I use comes down to how easily I can get it set up. Some software looks really nice but God help you if you want to set it up because the manual won't.
Not sure what the differences are as this is my first soapbox instance. Overall I really like it and the install was much easier than Mastodon which I tried first and eventually gave up and just used Cloudron. But I've followed Alex for a while and decided to try and install Soapbox on a box in my office and it ... just worked and I've been hooked ever since. I was impressed on how easily it just installed and it just works. The interface is nice and clean and it defaults to 5000 characters.
I'm chomping at the bit for 3.0 full. (Don't really know why, not sure if there's any new features or anything, but higher numbers = more better, right?)
I just tested on mobile, and it doesn't return me to the top of my feed, but the feed does advance without me so while I'm at say 25% scrolled down, but the post at 25% scrolled down could be a completely different one.
@sj_zero@newt May only issue with the soapbox web interface is that when I return from a thread it returns me to the top of my feed. Anyone know if that’s been fixed? I’m ok to update my front end. But I love the idea of abandoning the apps and just using a mobile browser.
I don't know mastodon, but I don't even use an app for soapbox-fe anymore. It works well as just a mobile website, and if I enable notifications then it also lets me know when something happens.
@atomicpoet >It means continued funding of Mastodon's app development. Every instance -- which is most of them -- benefits from this.
Jesus Christ! The official Mastodon app is such a huge pile of suck, I'd fund literally anything else rather than it. Hell, I'd rather give Gargron money if he promises to stop developing it. Just for the sake of ridding the world of ungodly awful software like this.
Someone asks a fair question: How does donating to Mastodon help every other instance?
It means continued funding of Mastodon's app development. Every instance -- which is most of them -- benefits from this.
For example, Mastodon recently added the ability to edit your posts. And not just edit them, allow you to view logs of the edits! This was a paid feature on Twitter, but it's now FREE on Mastodon.
Every instance that updates to Mastodon v4.0 now has the edit feature. Thus everyone who's on an instance that runs Mastodon v4.0 can edit their posts.
There's a lot of additional work Mastodon needs, and this is why donating to the non-profit helps!
UPDATE: Mastodon now has 5,472 patrons and appr. $24,000 in funding from Patreon. Pat yourselves on the back -- we're all contributing to a better Fediverse.
Because other people ask how donating helps, I will re-iterate:
1. It helps the continued development of Mastodon itself. Continued developments benefit every instance that runs Mastodon. 2. It helps the continued maintenance of instances run by Mastodon, who are among the largest instances on the Fediverse. Both these instances provide stress testing smaller instance as they grow.
Now of course, donate to your local instance too. I've mentioned this already: it's actually the first reply to the original post.
All this said, today I've spent a large portion of time blocking MAGA alt-right orcs, concern trolls, and people who generally don't read threads but like to argue anyway. Apparently, many folks get hot under the collar when you actually *make* a positive change in the world.
Nevertheless, donating whatever is in your heart to give takes guts and courage -- even if the stakes are a couple of dollars a month.
So pat yourselves on the back. You've done a good deed!
@jonporobil@atomicpoet Jon, there are 2 parts to this. 1: the non-profit organization developing the Mastodon software. 2: the server admin hosting and maintaining the mastodon instance you are registered on.
Both are non-profit and rely on donations to do their respective part.
Newbie question, sorry... Is this Patreon specifically supporting one particular Mastodon server, or the whole platform across all servers? I know that instance admins also often ask for help offsetting the costs to run their own instances, but this appears to pertain to all of them, right?