M stands for money

This morning I saw a post on Mastodon, the key part translates to:

Maybe we should stop pretending that Mastodon is commercially viable? It is not. The reach that many here are hoping for is simply not available. And then they leave again because “unfortunately it doesn't work”. — @pistolenkind@wien.rocks

Later, I just came accross the announcement of Phoenix for Bluesky: The developers behind Twitter-client Tweetbot (R.I.P) and Ivory, my Mastodon-client of choice, started to work on a client for Bluesky. The good news: They didn't give up on Mastodon. The bad news: It's about money:

Unfortunately, we can’t survive on Mastodon alone. — Tapbots

That's a shame.

Some months ago, iOS-developer Thomas Ricouard turned away his focus from his Mastodon-client IceCubes and also started to work on a client for Bluesky. Does that ring a bell? It's a shame.

At the same time, when Thomas stopped working on IceCubes, another open source client also ran out of funding: Mammoth. They already disappeared from the App Store and will shut down their server in a few days. It's a shame.

Software development costs a shitton of money, even if you cut most of the bloated bullshit of todays software development processes: You still have to pay (more or less) skilled people for their time (Hi, I'm one of them!).

Developers shifting their attention to other social networks due to economic reasons hurts Mastodon in several ways. I really value, that Mastodon is different from other social networks, there are no ads and it's more human. And I want to stay it that way (apart from Mastostans, they can please fuck off).

Still, we must make it more accessible, welcoming, and beginner-friendly in order to survive — or pay people to do that. They must be able to make a living out of that, so they can work on that thing full-time. It would be a shame if more developers turned away. We better find ways to pay people to work on Mastodon-software.

Compared to other social media services, Mastodon is ridiculously cheap to run and develop for and this is a huge advantage. But still: We live in a profit-driven, not to say: capitalist world. That's just a reality even if it sucks. Mastodon is still something worth protecting. We should make it stay by using the little money we have. We should pour as much money into that ecosystem as we can:

1. Go and throw some money at the developer of your client. Heck, pay Mastodon itself to develop the official apps (even if they don't pay me anymore)
2. Pay for the instance you are using.
3. Support small artists, coops, and businesses so that they prefer Mastodon over other social media platforms. Mastodon should be commercially viable to them, at least.
4. Tell people that you spent money there.

The last point is crucial: Talk about that you support people trying to make the internet, the world a better place again.

Thanks for reading.