Twitter Rival Mastodon Rejects Funding To Preserve Nonprofit Status 56
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Twitter rivalMastodon has rejected more than five investment offers from Silicon Valley venture capital firms in recent months, as its founder pledged to protect the fast-growing social media platform's non-profit status. Mastodon, an open-source microblogging site founded in 2016 by German software developer Eugen Rochko, has seen a surge in users since Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October amid concerns over the billionaire's running of the social media platform.
Rochko told the Financial Times he had received offers from more than five US-based investors to invest "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in backing the product, following its fast growth. But he said the platform's non-profit status was "untouchable," adding that Mastodon's independence and the choice of moderation styles across its servers were part of its attraction. "Mastodon will not turn into everything you hate about Twitter," said Rochko. "The fact that it can be sold to a controversial billionaire, the fact that it can be shut down, go bankrupt and so on. It's the difference in paradigms [between the platforms]."
Rochko is Mastodon's sole shareholder and, according to its 2021 annual report, he paid himself 2,400 euros per month last year, a figure he said has since risen by 500 euros. Mastodon will continue to rely on donations to fund the platform. The site has more than 8,500 donors on the membership platform Patreon, through which it is raising over 25,000 pounds a month. This compares with total earnings of just over 55,000 euros in the six months from June to December 2021. Rochko said his long-term ambition for Mastodon was to replace Twitter and other commercial social networks. "It's a long road ahead but at the same time, it's bigger than it ever has been."
Rochko told the Financial Times he had received offers from more than five US-based investors to invest "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in backing the product, following its fast growth. But he said the platform's non-profit status was "untouchable," adding that Mastodon's independence and the choice of moderation styles across its servers were part of its attraction. "Mastodon will not turn into everything you hate about Twitter," said Rochko. "The fact that it can be sold to a controversial billionaire, the fact that it can be shut down, go bankrupt and so on. It's the difference in paradigms [between the platforms]."
Rochko is Mastodon's sole shareholder and, according to its 2021 annual report, he paid himself 2,400 euros per month last year, a figure he said has since risen by 500 euros. Mastodon will continue to rely on donations to fund the platform. The site has more than 8,500 donors on the membership platform Patreon, through which it is raising over 25,000 pounds a month. This compares with total earnings of just over 55,000 euros in the six months from June to December 2021. Rochko said his long-term ambition for Mastodon was to replace Twitter and other commercial social networks. "It's a long road ahead but at the same time, it's bigger than it ever has been."
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He does take donations: https://www.patreon.com/mastod... [patreon.com]
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Beat me to it - I think it's a few tens of thousands per month. An investment of "hundreds of thousands" may not add much value.
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I'm guessing it has something to do with them offering "investments" and not "donations". The article doesn't say, but maybe there are strings attached as an investment, as investments are usually designed to make more money back. I've got to imagine they're still free to donate like anyone else.
Re:wut? (Score:5, Insightful)
1) why couldn't he take donations? Non profits take donations all the time.
2) "hundreds of thousands" this wasn't a serious funding effort, this is virtue signaling
Lol
1) These weren't donations, they were VC firms trying to buy a piece of a company. They'd almost certainly want him to change into a for-profit company for their stakes to be worth anything.
2) I'd agree "hundreds of thousands" is pretty small, it would actually be hard to get a VC fund to invest less than that. It's impressive that it came unsolicited but realistically I'd expect someone to step up to the plate with $10m. There's a lot of people making a decent salary who will refuse to sell out for a few hundred thousand, there's a fewer who will refuse to sell out for a few million.
Maybe the VCs were interested in keeping it non-profit and had some other motive in mind, of course, that motive might be a lot less pure than making a profit.
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They'd almost certainly want him to change into a for-profit company for their stakes to be worth anything.
How easy is that to do, though, really? If I donate to a nonprofit company, don't I have some reasonable expectation that it will conduct operations as a nonprofit company ... and not just take my money and run? Plus, nonprofits have reporting requirements, just like corporations.
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A donation is not the same as an investment or venture funding. A donation gives you no ownership/control or any rights whatsoever,
Not entirely. Sure, if I say, "I'm accepting donations," and you send me some money, I can just keep it and spend it any way that I want. I'm a private citizen. But a 501 (c) 3—if that's what Mastodon is—can't strictly do that.
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It is a special type of German company (Score:5, Informative)
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write it out 100x (Score:2)
Mastodon will continue to rely on donations
Mastodon will continue to rely on donations
Mastodon will continue to rely on donations
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FTFA: "Rochko told the Financial Times he had received offers from more than five US-based investors to invest "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in backing the product"
Investors don't make donations.
Is Mastodon a real Twitter competitor? (Score:4, Interesting)
I would like to see a viable Twitter alternative. But I am somewhat surprised that there isn't one.
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The "barrier" effect in IRC was pretty great. Yes, retards would still wander in, but at least some of them were filtered out by having to at least know what a server is, being able to use the weird commands, etc.
Re:Is Mastodon a real Twitter competitor? (Score:5, Insightful)
The other things you mention as Twitter features - "find trending things" and the algorithm force-feeding you what it thinks you're interested in - are precisely why I avoid that type of social media.
Missing those features is a feature in itself.
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Indeed. What Mastodon does as default is what people have to put a lot of work into making Twitter do.
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The other things you mention as Twitter features - "find trending things" and the algorithm force-feeding you what it thinks you're interested in - are precisely why I avoid that type of social media.
Missing those features is a feature in itself.
That is actually in Mastodon under the Explore tab if your instance is using it. It's based on faves and boosts that your instance can see. It's just not taking into account other things like replies or dwell time or ad clicks or whatnot that Twitter does. It's just the human interaction.
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When I looked at Mastodon, it felt like an IRC style service. I needed to connect to different servers for different type of content. I wasn't sure what servers I would need to or want to connect to. Seemed like a a barrier for users. Also would Mastodon be able to do things that a unified service like Twitter can? Like find trending things and show them to you? Or things that might interest you based on previous activity?
I would like to see a viable Twitter alternative. But I am somewhat surprised that there isn't one.
I think a stand-alone Mastadon server is basically a straight up Twitter alternative, that's what Trump's site and Gab both are.
Maybe people all end up congregating onto a single node and it becomes the new Twitter, or maybe they figure out how to make it nice and user friendly.
I do think Twitter as a website is pretty f&#$3d at this point, they're going to keep hemorrhaging cash and eventually the users will find a substitute whether it looks a lot like current Twitter or it's something else entirely.
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Maybe people all end up congregating onto a single node and it becomes the new Twitter, or maybe they figure out how to make it nice and user friendly.
The centralization combined with a lack of moderation is what made Twitter suck. You learned nothing from Twitter's failure.
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Maybe people all end up congregating onto a single node and it becomes the new Twitter, or maybe they figure out how to make it nice and user friendly.
The centralization combined with a lack of moderation is what made Twitter suck. You learned nothing from Twitter's failure.
Twitter never really failed until Musk took it over and massively personalized and politicized everything.
It could be that a Mastodon node with much stricter moderation policies than Twitter takes off and gets 90% of the users.
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Twitter never really failed until Musk took it over and massively personalized and politicized everything.
Oh honey it was already on that path for about 10 years before. Everybody on the center or left bailed on Twitter when it was obvious it was turning into a right-wing outrage clickbait engine around 2008-2010. Congrats on being a cisgendered straight white dude though, the last group to notice the overton window moving to the right.
It could be that a Mastodon node with much stricter moderation policies than Twitter takes off and gets 90% of the users.
Yeah, and I might perform weird sex acts with a farm animal on a San Diego street corner. Nobody wants to see either of these things, so it's not going to happen.
Re: Is Mastodon a real Twitter competitor? (Score:2)
"Never really failed"
Um, it was going bankrupt until the 2016 election cycle
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Mastodon is pretty good, but still a little on the clunky side. Federation works decently; the server I'm on is federated with most of the big ones including mastodon.social, so I can see everything I need to see in my feed.
It's a much nicer place than Twitter with actual thoughtful and decent discourse.
Re: Is Mastodon a real Twitter competitor? (Score:2)
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Mastodon is pretty good, but still a little on the clunky side. Federation works decently; the server I'm on is federated with most of the big ones including mastodon.social, so I can see everything I need to see in my feed.
matodon.social, The original server operated by the Mastodon has 192,000 active users.
The thread with trending posts is collected from all server instances.
There is also one thread which collects news from all server instances. These are direct links to Ars Technica etc.
Other server instances, ordered by the number of active users:
1. toot.community : Users 28,005 / Active 14,555 : If you have an account here, please consider signing up on Patreon for a monthly donation.
2. mastodon.scot : Users 27,756 / Act
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It will become an alternative when a critical mass of top celebrities start using it to break updates and news.
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I needed to connect to different servers for different type of content.
Only on the local feed. You could still follow people on different servers to bring it into your home feed (and the federated feed if it wasn't there already).
I would like to see a viable Twitter alternative. But I am somewhat surprised that there isn't one.
It bit you in the ass and you still missed it, then.
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The new IRC? (Score:2)
I've been mourning the death of IRC. Is there any chance of Mastodon becoming something of a similar, but more modern protocol for communicating with people?
(Similar in that, if a server gets taken over by retards, you can move to another one, there being servers with more general interests plus more specific ones like Furnet or whatever?)
Anyone have a server list?
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(Similar in that, if a server gets taken over by retards, you can move to another one, there being servers with more general interests plus more specific ones like Furnet or whatever?)
It's amusing when people use examples such as the above. They could have used anything else such as fly fishing, skiing or James Bond movies, but nope, they go straight to furries or ponies.
Interesting, don't ya think?
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It's called Discord. It's IRC for GenZ. :D
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Frankly, I doubt there is any more in-depth "discussion" going on than what you see on Facebook or YouTube comments. The ideas don't stand up to much scrutiny. Slashdot is probably the closest you'll get to that, and you see what it ends up here. Continual peddling of the same, tired, getmad talking points, then fingers in ears when someone points out, hey, this shit doesn't even make sense.
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I've heard that spoken of as primarily a voice chat medium, which is not something I'm interested in. Is that not correct?
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It's called Discord. It's IRC for GenZ. :D
You mean it's AOL for GenZ.
Keep using IRC! (Score:2)
You can bridge it with Matrix [matrix.org].
Re:The new IRC? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been mourning the death of IRC.
I submit that this raises the question of when something is actually 'dead'. AOL Instant Messenger is "dead" because the servers are shut down. It's literally impossible to log into the system and it's equally impossible to spin up one's own AIM servers to continue using the client if desired. AIM being called 'dead' is understandable.
IRC...seems like a bit more of a grey area.
Liberachat still has tens thousands of users regularly; EFNet, Freenode, and QuakeNet still have thousands of their own. Many private torrent trackers maintain their own rooms as well.
Compared to IRC's heydey in the early 1990s, yes, it's a shadow of its former self. However, servers are still active and maintained, with lots and lots of people using them. There are actively maintained clients for every OS under the sun, from Windows and Linux to Haiku and NetBSD, to iOS and Android and ChromeOS. InspIRCd and UnrealIRCd and bIRCd (some popular server titles) all have releases from the past year.
At what point is something like IRC 'dead'? If servers are still up and running with thousands of users daily, is it 'dead' because Discord has taken it over for the mainstream? Now we go down the rabbit hole of 'how many users does it take before it's "dead"? I'm not sure, but I'd submit that if all of the top 20 servers have more daily users than Marvel's Avengers...'dead' might be a bit of an overstatement.
Re: The new IRC? (Score:2)
IRC isnâ(TM)t functionally dead, but itâ(TM)s dead in practical terms. The vast majority of âoeusersâ are bots, with the balance being middle eastern men posting YOU WANT SEX TIME WITH ME. All the people that made IRC what it was left long ago for the Latest Thing. I miss IRC deeply. I spent many an all nighter chatting with friends in the 90â(TM)s before AIL and instant messaging cannibalized things like IRC and Usenet. That led to the majority of remaining users being pervs and s
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Usenet wasn't cannibalized so much as it was deliberately suppressed by large ISPs. The rise of cable and DSL providers coincides with the fall of Usenet, because Time Warner et. al. didn't want to carry controversial content outside their control.
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I haven't really spent much time on the huge networks like EFnet, but the few smaller ones I did frequent were still fairly active ca. 2010, even a few years afterward, but after that they just collapsed entirely. Issues on those specific servers probably contributed, but I could definitely tell there was no "fresh blood" coming in by that point.
Re: The new IRC? (Score:1)
IRC still exists as a protocol, you can still set up a server. All Mastodon does is put filters and some UI on it but it still centralizes control over content. Truly distributed and federated content systems are being built but there is little profit when you let people choose who they can interact with.
The service is maybe 3-5M users across tens of thousands of servers at its peak, with most of those being in Truth Social (also a Mastodon server at 1.7M users) and Pawoo (a commercial Japanese service with
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I just had to check, IRC is not dead. EFNet nodes are still there and when you join I still see active channels.
So not dead yet.
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I've been mourning the death of IRC. Is there any chance of Mastodon becoming something of a similar, but more modern protocol for communicating with people?
You're looking for XMPP.
Extinction (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure that climate change will soon make Mastodon extinct. The political climate, I mean.