A nudge to fund our future

For too long, the internet has been shaped by platforms funded by venture capital and advertising. The Fediverse is testament to a different kind of social media: one built for its users, not corporate interests. This independence is what makes Mastodon and the wider Fediverse special, fostering a diverse and resilient network of communities. We are showing the world every day, that this model works!

Independence comes with its own set of challenges. Running a server, moderating content, and developing the software that powers this network requires resources. We want to make it easier for those who value Mastodon to make donations directly, to “flip the script” from corporations funded by surveillance capitalism, to sustainable support built from many small donations. When the people who use the platform are its primary backers, the platform’s loyalty remains with them.

Over the next few days, we will be taking a deliberate and measured step forwards, by making the donation feature more visible. We will be rolling out a campaign on the Mastodon servers that we operate (mastodon.social and mastodon.online). This will allow us to gather feedback and understand the process, so we can learn whether it feels right for our community.

The initial campaign will appear via a banner to people that use our Android and iOS apps, if they are signed-in to an account on one of our instances, and only if their account has existed for four weeks or more. The banner will be easy to dismiss, of course, and we will not continually prompt users to donate. This will only show up in our mobile apps for now - in a future campaign, we hope to extend the feature to the web as well. The banner is separate from the existing Donate button that appears in the app settings for users on our instances.

If this works well, we would like to make this fundraising option available to all other Mastodon instances. This would empower individual server administrators to receive direct support from their users. Each instance could then choose whether or not to enable this feature, giving them another tool to ensure their long-term viability. We expect this to have a number of detailed requirements, and it would take effort to build out as a broader feature; it is something we consider a medium to longer term concept, rather than an immediate next step.

We know that collecting money can present complexities and questions. We’d like to figure out how to do this well, together with the community. This is not a corporate fundraising campaign: it’s an effort to secure the future of a more ethical and independent social web. It’s an invitation to help us build a platform that truly belongs to all of us. Thank you for your support as we take another small step forwards in our fundraising efforts.