Yesterday, as part of the discussions related to Lemmy current inability to delete all user content I wrote a proposal: if enough people stepped up to help with funding, I’d take my work on my Fediverser project (which already has an admin web tool that “knows” how to interface with Lemmy) to solve all the GDPR-specific issues that we were raised by @maltfield@monero.town

The amount asked is, quite frankly, symbolic. I offered to work 10h/week on it if at least 20 people showed up to contribute via Github (which would be $4/month) or to signup to my instance (which access is given via a $29/year subscription). In other words, I’m saying “Give me $80/month and I will work 40 hours per month on this thing which so many of you are saying is critical to the project.”

So now that we have passed 24 hours, 58 upvotes and a handful of “that’s great!” responses, let me tell you how that translated into actual supporters:

  • Zero sponsors on Github
  • Zero signups on Communick.

Don’t take this as me demanding anything. I’m writing this just to illustrate the following:

  • The Tragedy of the commons is real. I can bet that at least 30% of the 60+ thousand users on Lemmy are proud owners of a pricey iPhone, and most of these are okay with paying for an app to use on their pricey iPhones, but almost none of them will even consider throwing a few bucks per year on the way of an open source developer.

  • The Outrage Mill is not a “capitalist” or even “corporate” phenomenon. People were piling on the devs yesterday for completely ignoring “such a crucial piece of functionality”, but no one actually stepped up to offer (or gather) the resources needed to have this problem solved. It’s almost as if people were getting more out of the discussion about the problem than working through a solution.

  • “Skin In The Game” is a powerful filter. No matter how much people will tell you that something is important to them, the true test is seeing how many are willing to pay the asking price. If not people are not willing to pay $2 per hour of work, then I can assume that this is not really important.

  • RentlarEnglish
    12•10 months ago

    I respect your efforts and your willingness to propose a solution to the various problems that Lemmy faces, particularly the moderation and image management aspects. I did not see your proposal until you linked it in this post.

    I will say though the Fediverser project is closely aligned with alien.top, which in October 2023 was a one-way Reddit to Lemmy bridge. Many Lemmy users (myself included) were very upset with how that “solution” caused automated post traffic to flood servers all over Lemmy, drowning out swaths of discussion until admins defederated from it.

    I am the type who puts money (at least what little I have) where their mouth is. However I can’t support Fediverser or Communick.news because of the above, I’m sorry. As a separate project you may have more success, mention me if you implement or are implementing some sort of extension to allow Lemmy to execute full data extraction and deletions per GDPR, or a proper admin or per user image management tool (offer open until May 31 2024).

    • @rglullis@communick.newsOPEnglish
      -1•10 months ago
      • It would be separate from Fediverser. I’m just mentioning because by working on it I learned enough about Lemmy’s API and database to know that I can create a management dashboard that can work with the Django admin.
      • alien.top is not mirroring posts anymore. The reason I am not working on the two-way bridge is (surprise!) because no one who expressed interest in it has shown up to support it as well.
      • If you are offering donations on the condition that I do something that satisfies your expectations, it’s not a donation. I’m not here to chase people around the internet for $4/month. If you want to hire me to do your bidding, my consulting fee is 250€/hour. Pay me that and I can do the monkey dance. Please don’t ever come to me or anyone else with “do this and I will contribute”. It’s downright offensive.
      • RentlarEnglish
        7•10 months ago

        This is what you wrote in the post:

        • “Skin In The Game” is a powerful filter. No matter how much people will tell you that something is important to them, the true test is seeing how many are willing to pay the asking price. If not people are not willing to pay $2 per hour of work, then I can assume that this is not really important.

        I’m telling you what is important to me by your definition, and you write the response you did. Very well then, it appears you don’t need support from people like me if you find it offensive. May you have a pleasant day.

        • @rglullis@communick.newsOPEnglish
          -1•10 months ago

          Skin in the Game is about showing that you are willing to accept the risks and costs of standing up to your values. This is a separate thing from “I will only give money to X if they are willing to be subjected to my personal purity test”.

          I am not saying that donating to me specifically would be a display of SITG. You (and by you I mean “anyone that wants to keep using Lemmy but is worried about potential GDPR violations”) could, e.g:

          • get a lawyer to work and make a real assessment of the legal liabilities for admins and users in the EU.
          • take initiative to pool together resources to find other Rust developers who could work on the Lemmy source code, pay them instead.
          • contribute to a competing project to signal to the Lemmy devs that this is important.
          • go ahead and tell the Lemmy devs “I am willing to contribute to your work specifically to reach the GDPR-compliance milestone”

          The offensive part of your previous post is not that it makes the donation conditional on a milestone, but just you came as someone who is trying to use money as a way to control my behavior. You basically said “I don’t like what you did before, so I will only support you for something that I do like if you disown your previous actions”. This is completely removed from SITG and reminiscent of a struggle session.

          • RentlarEnglish
            3•10 months ago

            My apologies if you thought my comment was trying to control you with money, I wasn’t trying to hire you. My offer is open to anybody that might just happen to be working on something like that for any reason, they can mention me for my support. The time limit is only so I don’t get 10 requests in 2025 from people when I’ve long forgotten about it.