[ChrisMarshallNY]

I'm a participant in a community that explicitly refuses money from outside its membership. If that means we can't grow fast, or have fancy digs, so be it.

The reason for that, is to avoid having influence from outside. Even "angel" investment can be problematic, as the "angel" has the ear of the leadership.

I have found that even well-meaning outsiders can have highly destructive influence, because they don't understand the culture and they aren't the ones on the hook, if things go pear-shaped, as opposed to the ones that have a real, personal, stake (like all those Ello users, who lost so much).

[laurex]

It’s very interesting and telling that most of the technology that connects us does not have us as a customer, or a financial beneficiary. One of the key aspects of technofeudalism is the extractive nature of most of our platforms.

[klipt]

Because given the choice it seems many people prefer free with ads to paid?

I'm just thankful that mobile phone networks haven't switched to a "free with ads interspersed into your texts" model yet.

(Of course there are still ads in my texts, but at least those are officially spam rather than network endorsed.)

[laurex]

This is an argument for standards. You can switch messaging clients. Platforms own you.

[KRAKRISMOTT]

Yes, and ̶G̶m̶a̶i̶l̶ email is such a successful example.

[thereisnospork]

Imagine if the progenitors of email thought to require e-stamps, say a thousand emails for a buck. There's a parallel universe where 'Email co.' is a major tech player comparable to Google. Not sure it's a better universe, but bears consideration.

[StreetChief]

This effectively does exist https://www.jpay.com/PEmessages.aspx

[ChrisMarshallNY]

In the late 1980s, I worked for a company that wanted to do exactly that.

It was an X.400-based nightmare, and never took off.

[unholythree]

I remember a joke (or conspiracy theory) from the 90’s that the US Postal Service wanted to charge people per email.

[NoraCodes]

It is. I switched away from Gmail; many have.

[kelnos]

Same, but I realize that nearly everyone I correspond with uses Gmail, so Google has all my emails regardless. (Ok, they don't get my transactional email, since those are usually sent through something like Sendgrid, but... yeah.)

[steveklabnik]

It is always so tragic to me that, for over a decade, I would have paid for Twitter. But by the time they rolled that out, enough had changed that there's no way I was going to pay for Twitter.

Market timing is hard.

[MomoXenosaga]

Actually they tried. WhatsApp fucked them up.

Literally in a span of months SMS usage went the way of the dinosaur.

[renewiltord]

That's a customer choice. Metafilter charges money and there are others that do as well.

[darcys22]

The issue is that without funding a projects velocity is low and that can frustrate the community.

Everyone says they are on board with supporting the little guys, until they hit bugs and start complaining.

[mikro2nd]

Sometimes -- those times when you're breaking entirely new ground with a thing, when you're starting with just a vague vision of where the thing might go -- slow is better. Slow gives you time to understand the effects of what you've already done and the possibilities that affords.

I guess it depends on whether you're looking to achieve something unique and truly new, or just "get rich fast".

[willi59549879]

if we lived in utopia the software could be open source, so that everyone who wants a feature can contribute. Best would be when it can easily be self hosted

[wtbdrgb]

and how much do you know about the internal workings of that community? how much do you know about it's "future"? how transparent is it about how much time top level management and leadership are investing and how they are compensated for it? how much do you know about the financial sponsors of the members of your community?

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Actually, a whole lot.

But that's a story for a different venue...