Well, fuck. It was fun while it lasted.
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone joins board of Mastodon's new US nonprofit | TechCrunch
Submitted 8 months ago by sexy_peach@beehaw.org to technology@beehaw.org
Comments
halm@leminal.space 8 months ago
Kichae@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
There are any number of Mastodon forks out there. Misskey and its forks are really good. Pleroma and Akkoma are good, and so is Friendica.
Mastodon has always been an exercise in attention and influence seeking for Gargon. The rest of us don’t need him or it. It’s just a trademark.
Kichae@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
This isn’t both concerning and also totally in line with every move Gargon’s made along the way. Nope nope nope!
sexy_peach@beehaw.org 8 months ago
I don’t necessarily agree that this is concerning. I never thought of gargron of making good moves either though.
LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 8 months ago
I would like to do more research on alternative non-profit governance structures. In my experience, non-profit boards seem to be just another mechanism by which the wealthy control decision-making in society. However, I don’t know what kind of structure would be better.
koncertejo@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Workers co-op
LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 8 months ago
I think workers coops are definitely better than private ownership but it seems like there should also be some involvement of the broader community being served (or negatively impacted in some cases) in the case of non-profits.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 8 months ago
So the employees who are employed by donations, or all contributors? Not trying to throw a wrench in your suggestion, just wondering what this would look like for masto
KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
I think this can be both a benefit and a risk, since Mastodon is still what it is and won’t change because of a board. Biz could provide Eugen a lot of insight, but by the same risk, Eugen may want out and turn Masto profitable.
WatDabney@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
So… by my count, the board of directors actually outnumber the employees.
At a “non-profit” (until that was revoked) company that gets most of its funding through Patreon.
Years from now (and at this rate, not very many of them), when people wonder how it was that such a promising venture that championed decentralization turned into just another enshittified megacorporation squatting over a piece of internet real estate and extracting rent to pay obscene salaries to a handful of executives - this is how. We’re watching as the foundation is being laid, right now.
drwho@beehaw.org 8 months ago
For non-profits (like 501©(3)'s) that’s not unusual. Non-profits are more like specialized tools for the board of directors than like companies.
Source: First ten years of my career were at non-profits.
jarfil@beehaw.org 8 months ago
That’s an abuse of non-profits for financial engineering. They’re intended to work exactly like companies, except without a monetary profit for shareholders.
Source: Got plenty of blank stares when I tried to set up a non-profit, “you’re not yet big enough to think about tax evasion”, they’d keep telling me 😒
atocci@kbin.social 8 months ago
It's not a good ratio, but assuming they managed to fill the three developer positions they were intending to when this interview was given last year and no one has left since then, that's 5 full time employees to 5 board members. I can't find more up-to-date numbers on the employee count unfortunately.
onlinepersona@programming.dev 8 months ago
This is the enshittification fast-track, it feels like.
Anti Commercial-AI license
Corgana@startrek.website 8 months ago
How so?
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 8 months ago
Is the board paid? I thought it was a volunteer position, where you meet based on a certain cadence and vote on enterprise matters.
I’m also quite wary of corp/venture/capitalist influence on masto/fedi/décentralisation.
WatDabney@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
I would presume it’s not paid yet (though the CEO certainly is). That phase of the operation comes later.
For the moment, they’re working to solidify as much control as possible of as much of the fediverse as possible, which control will allow them to gatekeep it, monetize it, extract rent from it and inevitably enshittify it. That, so it’s hoped, will be the phase during which their investment now will pay off.