this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
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Hey everyone, hope you're doing well. For some time, lemmy's been struggling with donations. For all these years, the lemmy devs, like them or hate them; have been building the software that powers the entirety of the forumverse (that's what i'm calling it, fuck you) so if you have even a dollar/euro/peso/whatever to give, it would be greatly appreciated (by the lemmy devs, and all instance admins!)

Good day to y'all :D

crossposted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/29579005

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

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[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 53 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (8 children)

Just to point out that the developer's Marxism is truly an irrelevant thing in all places that matter. Their efforts in software development are 99% more impactful to your life than their theoretical support of authoritarian regimes will ever be. And as bad as their denial of historical or current event might be, they're ultimately inconsequential. They're not in charge of foreign policy. They would never have an impact in Chinese internal politics. However them being Marxist at least ensures that they nominally have their ideology towards the right location in support for the disenfranchised instead of the rich. Even if like 50$ per month go to the .ml instance, it truly matters very little.

Honestly, people need to get some perspective on how much impact being a Marxist online has in the world. It has none. Marxists as a political force are mostly irrelevant no matter how eloquently they will try to claim global south revolutionary efforts as their own. Efforts in FOSS however is obviously very relevant and impactful.

PS: Yes, their statements on transgender people are problematic, but they seem to want to retract them. ~~Let's see.~~ EDIT: Welp

All that said, if you still can't bring yourselves to donate to lemmy devs because 0.1% of that might go towards the lemmy.ml hosting costs, you have no excuse to not donate to your own instance. Our donation buttons are on the main page and not only do you fund this instance, but also all the development efforts in tooling such as Threativore and Fediseer which are also FOSS.

[–] nomugisan@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

I think it's worth it to put in a P.S.S. there now that ~~Des~~ nut basically said "sorry I got caught"

Like seriously this dude is a massive piece of shit, not because he's a Marxist-Leninist or a tankie or whatever; he's a transphobe. I hold him in the same regard as I hold Elon Musk at this point because the only real difference is I'm pretty sure ~~Des~~ nut doesn't have a trans daughter.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] nomugisan@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 3 weeks ago

Oh yeah I didnt even read his name my bad

[–] AWistfulNihilist@lemmy.world 18 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

This is my opinion, most people think nothing about not spending on a business that has right wing opinions, because they see them as harmful.

The developers of Lemmy and .ml are packaging arguably (for many, this is just an opinion) harmful rhetoric into their free platform at base with their moderation. The one developer that has tried to distance themselves from thar rhetoric, can't help but engage in it when pressed.

Frankly that's a fucking propoganda tool, and if throwing away .ml is throwing away Lemmy, then I hope someone forks the project and continues development without the baggage.

I'm not responsible for the developers shooting themselves in the foot with their opinions, that's on them!

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[–] anarchiddy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 3 weeks ago

Right - frankly I only have a dbzer0 account because I thought the general vibe was less factional than .world or sht.justworks, it's surprising me that so many people seem to be loosing the forest for the trees on this.

There are very few other FOSS projects that I use every single day, and I don't hesitate supporting any of them even though I have no idea what their personal views on worker liberation or trans rights are. I'm quite confident that I align more with the ML lemmy devs politically than most of the other FOSS project developers I interact with, and not because I agree with them on the use of state power or trans exclusion.

Anyway, Nutomic is saying there are support links you can donate through that do not go towards the ml server costs - I recommend anyone who's using lemmy and has an issue with the .ml political views donate through those instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater by boycotting the platform they're enjoying.

[–] naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

Extremely hinged post as usual. Even in light of the transphobia/non apology it is worth pointing out lemmy is one of the only places we can connect and discuss things like DIY hormones without censorship or corporate surveillance.

Lemmy dying for lack of maintenance will not help us in the struggle for equality.

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[–] gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 46 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (5 children)

Is the crazy tankie still the one who's get the money?

Then lol, never

Oh, and apparently donating does to the .ml server costs, too? Idk how true that is, but hell no if true and gross how much this is getting spammed around

[–] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 36 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

There's piefed too; i'm very interested in it (even contributed to it, not through code though; through ideas to rimu and even a whole theme) it's still too early to be used by us, but if you're interested: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/38328295/16837857

I’d love to run a piefed instance, as I can hack its code directly. Sadly it’s just not as mature, One can’t migrate instances, and there’s not enough time in the world :(

Ye if it matures I might host a new instance, but I have my hands full enough with one as is it.

[–] taco@piefed.social 12 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm using the theme, so thank you.

[–] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 3 weeks ago

Glad to hear somebody's using it :D

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[–] miss_demeanour@lemmy.dbzer0.com 29 points 3 weeks ago

Agreed.
Never, unless funds can be 100% directed AWAY from .ml and its sycophants.

[–] ChilledPeppers@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Can you donate directly to other devs? That really is very concerning, and I really don't want to help .ml..

[–] gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 3 weeks ago (43 children)

As it says there, you can to nutomic, but they're famously a massive transphobe who claims that trans people are western propaganda (Id forgotten that until I read the comments on the post I linked)

I've said it off platform for a whole - Lemmy's a waste of time because the devs are garbage people the community actively hates. Unless someone forks it or the current devs hand it over I don't see Lemmy making it much further than this tbh. I kinda expected them to give up on the project from all the mass hate they got a while ago, but part of what makes them annoying is how stubborn they are lol

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[–] nutomic@lemmy.ml 10 points 3 weeks ago (19 children)

Would you donate for Lemmy development if lemmy.ml had a separate donation account?

[–] Hansae@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

I've already donated a few times but this would genuinely be a good idea imo, Lemmy.ml's userbase can likely keep it running by itself & it removes the ick factor from having any of my money go toward it and seemingly one of the more significant roadblocks to people donating.

I do genuinely love what you've created!

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[–] thann@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 3 weeks ago (21 children)

The devs activly support calls for the deaths of all americans on ML. There needs to be a way of supporting the codebase without supporting the core devs....

[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

Support the codebase without supporting the people who write the codebase seems impossible. Unless you want to fork it and then take the money for that.

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[–] RandomVideos@programming.dev 11 points 3 weeks ago (27 children)

Is there any source to that claim? It sounds ridiculous even by lemmygrad and hexbear standards

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[–] altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 3 weeks ago

Dess had his mouth running further than him, saying stupid shit, but I can downplay that and keep donating to him for the future of Lemmy as a whole. The Lemmigrad donation stream may be his own choice, but if he does that, we therefore can ask for a total detalisation of his income and spendings. We deserve to know, if he does that from his own paycheck himself, or if our donations directly support this one stalinist resource.

[–] flicker@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

This is excellent timing. I just got an email last night that my auto subscribed donation to our instance was canceled and I don't know why. I went to just reschedule it and they wanted my cc info but I was waaaay too drunk and in the middle of Pathfinder to go find my card.

Appreciate the reminder. I'll fix that now.

[–] 3dmvr@lemm.ee 14 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

I dont like that they imply lemmy would die without them like mbin and piefed dont exist? And they are running off activityhub, not like the core is lemmy? Correct me if im wrong, but if they stopped developing wed prob have a short period before apps switched to supporting mbin/piefed or others popped up? Guess the hard parts migrating all existing communites/instances.

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