The idea is simple. A worker-consumer hybrid coop that develops, maintains and hosts a lemmy-like fediverse platform that is open sourced.
There r two pricing tiers- a free and paid tier. If u pay a monthly membership fee, you become a member of the consumer body. If u r hired by the coop, u of course become part of the worker body.
The core of the coop's workings are direct democratic. Creating, filling and destroying job positions are all done direct democratically. To pass a piece of legislation, either one of the following conditions need to be met:
- Simple passing: Both, worker and consumer bodies cast more than 50% votes each for the given bill.
- Consumer override: If the consumer body casts more than two thirds of the votes for a bill.
Assume that the quality of the platform is as good as Lemmy is right now. Assume that the functionality is similar too.
Would you be interested in being a member? Do u think this is a good idea?
I personally find Lemmy's current donations based model to be severely lacking from a fundraising point of view. There needs to be a better form of organisation imo.
The direct democratic consumer coop element would bring in more people imo. I'm hoping that the worker coop element prevents worker exploitation.
Do you think this is an absolutely horseshit idea? Or do u kinda like it? Or do u have any suggestions? I'm seriously considering this, which is what made me ask this here. I have a Lemmy client nearing the MVP stage which I was developing with this purpose in mind. Sorry if this is the wrong community for the post.
Yes, it would be federated. No, there wouldn't be restrictions on anyone to host this in a particular way if they want to. The license is copyleft at the end of the day. The coop platform would do two things- develop software n host that software. If somebody else wants to host that software, they can freely do that. However, maybe getting coop endorsement for ur instance would require u to pass certain conditions determined by the consumer n worker body.
Nothing. A lemmy instance can definitely try this model out. But remember, my coop proposal is not just for instance hosting but primarily for development of the software that is to be hosted. Starting something like this requires either dedicated devs, or a lot of capital investment to pay these devs before getting revenue. In my case, I think I'm a motivated dev willing to work for nothing in the beginning to get this thing working.
To clarify- the instance would also have a free tier. Making an account and operating it in itself would be free. However, VOTING rights need u to pay money.
How's this different from Lemmy's donations model? Well, Lemmy is a benevolent dictatorship. As amazing as the Lemmy devs are, they aren't beholden to do what u say. Let's say u tell them to develop feature A. But they want to develop feature B. U have two options: stop donating or suck it up and let them develop feature B.
In the coop model, as u r a member owner, u would be able to control exactly how ur money is being spent. The difference would work exactly like living under a dictatorship (which has a good dictator for now) vs a democracy.
Oook, i was thinking at the instance moderation level, you're meaning at the software dev level.
Or fork it, add your own features, and don't break federation compatibility (activitypub? idk). But I guess we're talking specifically about features where that's not possible.
I don't know how well this would fare, because it sounds to me like you're replacing the dev lead position with a democracy/hivemind.
Like it or not, software development often follows the Pareto Principle (20% of the devs contribute 80% of the code), and IMO that happens because those 20% think of themselves as responsible for the direction of the project. They feel empowered to have a vision for the project and work towards it over time from their deep understanding of everything going on (because they are responsible for 80% of it).
I think you would effectively be subverting that position and developer mindset. No dev could ever feel that responsibility or empowerment because they aren't in control of the direction the software is going. They are at the mercy of the vote. They can't make changes with future decisions in mind because they don't have control. They might have implemented one feature completely differently if they had known the outcome of a future vote on a future feature.
Best case, people just listen to the devs expertise and let them do what they want. Worst case, the devs disagree with the outcome of a vote and the project, maybe forking it to make their own dictatorship, and a bunch of users will likely follow them.
That would be my main concern with the model, but who am I to say. Maybe it's never happened because it's inherently flawed, or maybe just no one has ever tried it. Or maybe it is happening right now somewhere and I've just never heard of it.
U would have to have software development skills for that. What if u'r an Amazon worker who just wants to have a platform where u n ur co-workers can freely organise a strike without censorship? U'r screwed now.
You raise very valid points here n in the text that follows. However, if u think about it, it turns to a democracy vs dictatorship debate.
"What would the peasants know about governing a country? A country should be governed only by experts because they know what's best for everyone". Of course u'r not saying stuff to this extent, but that's kinda it. And u'r right. Dictatorships have a high risk to reward ratio. If u get a good dictator, progress can be tremendous. If u get a bad dictator, u die. Democracies generally tend to be a lot more stable and last longer.
U can see the above trend in case of failure rates of cooperatives and corporations. Coops have a significantly less rate of failure when compared to corporations..
As for why we don't have social media coops? Well, social media is a pretty recent invention. It required a ton of investment to become profitable. In the capitalist model that we live in today, equity is the biggest n easiest way of fundraising. U can't do equity based fundraising for coops. Fundraising for coops has to be in the form of bonds n loans, which is very hard to get for such new tech.
That's my hypothesis as to why we don't have many social media coops running around. Take groceries however. There r retail coops practically everywhere, n in some countries they make up a huge huge chunk of the market share. Take the example of credit unions. They've practically existed forever n have provided much better services to their members when compared to banks.