Mastodon now a non-profit organisation | Hacker News Reader

Mastodon now a non-profit organisation

blog.joinmastodon.org

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> I want Mastodon to have more resources for things like hiring extra developers, UX designers, developing official apps and so on, and I want there to be a clear boundary between fundraising for that cause and my personal income.

This is an important step, and one that I'd love to see more FOSS projects take

In USA it's pretty difficult to get a NFP (501c3) created around just code. One needs to have other things in place, community, grand goals, etc. I wish it was easier too but US-IRS has put additional scrutiny.

If any lawyers on here have a speciality on this I'm looking for help.

> In USA it's pretty difficult to get a NFP (501c3) created around just code.

Yeah, I know, and that does suck. It's varied a bit over time with various IRS administrations, though, so maybe it'll get better.

(I am a lawyer, but I don't have an active practice since I became a programmer, so I'm not someone who can help. But good luck!)

Software Freedom Conservancy is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization that […] provides a non-profit home and infrastructure for FLOSS projects.

https://sfconservancy.org/

For those who don't know: Mastodon is like Twitter, except decentralised and open source. Becoming a gGmbH means Eugen is seeking to expand it further.

I wonder if all the hoopla is because mastodon / the fediverse are finally receiving some (deserved) traction? The accounts count does not seem to show a new regime (https://the-federation.info/) but maybe there are more reliable indicators?

In any case, sorting out conflicts of interest, business models, competing visions etc about the fediverse is a task that is still almost 100% for the future, as being niche and unknown does not put much pressure.

The issue of a "local or global timeline" is imho but the thin edge of a wedge: the current open source fediverse projects largely emulate the surveillance platforms (indiscriminately copying the good and the bad). That is extremely limiting and ultimately self-defeating. The open source fediverse can, must (and most likely in due course will) redefine the meaning of social platforms so as to undo the damage done by the first generations. Godspeed

Isn't (one of) the point of federation to limit the scope of surveillance? e.g. My host knows everything about me, but hosts it peers with only know that I'm indigochill@myhost, essentially the same as email.

there are so many configurations with different "information leakage" profiles / preferences: from self-hosting to mass instances, from pseudonymous accounts to verified / public identities etc. One of the strong points of the fediverse would be to enable and organize that multitude of options under uniform protocols that do not force anybody to particular architectures...

quick, give me an accurate count of the number of email addresses provisioned worldwide.

You'll never be able to accurately measure the federated social web unfortunately, just due to how it works (and how statistics can be inflated).

Glad to see this important step in securing the future of software that is more than just code.

Having been a member of the Fosstodon instance https://www.fosstodon.org/ for six months I expect that many HNers may find it an interesting and engaging instance. It's centred around free/open source software and similar services and is fully of friendly, witty and knowledgeable folk.

I applied to join Fosstodon based on your comment.

Fosstodon, despite the name, is run by people who don't actually use free software. It's pretty funny.

You'll also find that users of the instance don't all run entirely free software and yet it's still a relevant place to congregate and discuss topics like "why this open source project didn't work for me", "why this open source project was a great alternative to closed-source offerings" and all of the subtleties in-between. My experience of most of these conversations is that few people try to gatekeep or provide vapid criticism of people who aren't fanatical purists.

You'll find that most community members (including the staff) come from a wide/diverse background. Unlike some other groups that have more of a "FOSS or else" atmosphere, Fosstodon has members (and staff) that are hobbyists to extremists to pragmatics and everything in between. It's really a great place to discuss and support the FOSS movement without being chastised if you're not "all in".

That's pretty cool (and also pretty ridiculous that it took 8 months). I'm kinda confused by the last part:

> Since both Patreon and our custom sponsorship platform are based around rewards to patrons/sponsors, they cannot be classified as donations, so there are no changes to how those are taxed.

So when German non-profits want to hand out merch in exchange for a specific donation amount, non-profit has to pay for-profit taxes on that?

> So when German non-profits want to hand out merch in exchange for a specific donation amount, non-profit has to pay for-profit taxes on that?

No, I think what he's saying is that it's not a tax-deductible donation for the patrons. (Which is actually more-or-less law in the US too, unless the reward is worth vastly less than the donation[0])

[0] https://www.nolo.com/legal-update/irs-changes-thank-you-gift...

> So when German non-profits want to hand out merch in exchange for a specific donation amount, non-profit has to pay for-profit taxes on that?

I don't know about german regulations specifically, but based on my experience in other legal systems and my understanding of the announcement, i believe it means that because "patreon and our custom sponsorship platform" aim to reward individuals, they cannot be considered donations for the non-profit.

A non-profit may employ/contract people for specific tasks aligned with its goals, but rewarding people outside of such specific contract is closer to a "shareholder" model and incompatible with non-profit regulations. Of course, contributors to a non-profit may setup donation systems to pay their own bills, but that must not be advertised as donations "to the non-profit" (because that would be a lie), and they have to declare/pay taxes on that.

That would be my default assumption. Back when I was running a non-profit in Poland, this was the assumption we've made when evaluating options like Patreon - that we'll account for it as income (I don't know the actual interpretation because I've stepped down before the foundation started using such services).

On a related note - also in terms of Polish tax laws (which are bound to be more similar to German than e.g. US would be) - I recently talked about this with a tax advisor, in context of individuals funding OSS work via Patreon and other donation schemes; their answer was that it's a bit case-by-case, depending on your reward structure. If the donors are getting direct value back for their donations, it'll be seen as you selling those rewards (and/or performing a service), which will obligate you to start an actual business. The safe way to do it is to not give anything in return, except maybe for a trinket that's not commensurate to the value of donation.

To qualify as a donation under German tax law, a donation needs to be voluntary (freiwillig) and altruistic (uneigennützig).[1] Where exactly the boundary between altruism and personal benefit lies would have to be judged by the courts in each individual case. For example, engraving the name of a donor on an altar, naming her in intercessions and inviting her to a dedication ceremony was interpreted as an "outflow of charitable funds" (Ausfluss der gemeinnützigen Mittelvergabe) and entitled to a tax deduction.[2]

[1] For more details see the following ruling of Germany's Federal Fiscal Court: https://www.bundesfinanzhof.de/de/entscheidung/entscheidunge... (in German).

[2] Cf. this ruling of Germany's Federal Fiscal Court: https://www.bundesfinanzhof.de/de/entscheidung/entscheidunge... (in German).

Related discussion: there was recently some move within the community to try and topple the current maintainer. That calls was based on technical/UX disagreements (regarding the local timeline) and on the maintainer allegedly having connection to a surveillance project called Eunomia: https://seedy.xyz/posts/0005-open-letter/

I am not a member of the Mastodon community and i have no clue to the veracity of these statements, but i believe they're worth considering in the topic of Mastodon changing governance model.

Complete and utter conspiracy theorist bullshit, basically.

Do you care to elaborate for those people like me who don't have detailed knowledge of the Eunomia project? The official project page features wording that may lead a privacy-conscious person to raise eyebrows: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/825171

I can not see a single thing on there that would raise any eyebrows.

> determine whether information they come across online is trustworthy or not

Who gets to determine what is trustworthy or not? Is it a central authority, or a WoT? The former is a very dangerous tool of social control, the latter does not usually address concerns of misinformation, as the WoT forms information bubbles with their confirmation biases.

> the project will allow users to vote on content trustworthiness. The number of votes appears as an indicator that may assist others in assessing trustworthiness

How are these votes stored? Are they part of the ActivityPub protocol, or a third-party centralized layer, or some kind of blockchain/DHT? Do you get to see the votes of your contacts, or the overall votes? How do you prevent misinformation campaign to try and hijack the votes? If they are stored in a WoT/blockchain, what kind of measures can you take to protect the social graph?

More from the website:

> a unique peer-to-peer and blockchain infrastructure

> EUNOMIA users can see the modifications of online information in between different users' posts, in an information cascade

> This may include indicators of bot activity, such as the ratio of followers to following

I don't know about you, but these sentences make me raise eyebrows.

> Who gets to determine what is trustworthy or not?

> How are these votes stored?

From what I can tell, this is literally a research project attempting to answer these questions. Look at the results tab, then under 'Demonstrators, pilots, prototypes' to see what they have come up with so far.

Yes, i understand that's a research project. I'm just skeptical of a publicly-funded software research project with millions of euros of funding (most researchers i know don't have access budgets like that) and with seemingly some ties to the surveillance/military apparatus.

Also i did some digging, and despite a paywall and some articles without links at all, their publications raise more questions than they answer about the actual trust/governance model and privacy implications (see my other comments quoting some bits).

Moreover, the sentiment/subjectivity analysis via ML leaves me dubious. I have a hard time believing AI can understand human discourse and/or help solve human problems, see also James Mickens USENIX talk "Why do keynote speakers keep suggesting we can improve security?"

Finally, let me put on my paranoid hat: if i were to build a large-scale surveillance network to expose the social graph and flow of information (think XKEYSCORE) for decentralized social media, it would look a lot like EUNOMIA! On the contrary, if i were to build a reputation protocole for decentralized social media, it would be much simpler than the EUNOMIA project, and would probably be based on some kind of Web of Trust / Fog of Trust (since it's aimed at classifying/auditing public data, where the social graph is already, at least partially, exposed).

You are knee-jerk reacting to keywords you have been taught to hate, instead of actually reading and comprehending what is being said.

You need to work on that, first of all.

> You are knee-jerk reacting to keywords you have been taught to hate

Quite the contrary, my french culture and education has taught me to have great respect for authority and for startup nation bullshit newspeak. But since then, i have developed some form of critical thinking.

> You need to work on that, first of all.

I tried. In their publications section, out of 7 items, there are: 2 that don't have a link; 1 about text/image similarity analysis; 1 about sentiment analysis; 1 about situated knowledge and the "user-researcher"; 1 that's behind a paywall (the one describing the EUNOMIA project); 1 that's not even a scientific paper but an "information hygiene" guide

In their "Deliverables" section we find more information. I find it strange that documents are labeled "Dissemination Level: Public", or "Type of deliverable PUBLIC" which suggests acquaintance with the surveillance/military industrial complex, as originally exposed in the critique linked in the article i was mentioning: https://hub.libranet.de/wiki/paulfree14/The(20)critical(20)E...

From these documents, a few quotes which may raise eyebrows:

- the [blockchain] framework offers embedded mechanisms for preserving privacy with the use of digital signatures and cryptographic hashes

- each information element that it is stored in the P2P distributed file storage a specific token will be generated by the Storage Serve

- The AAA Server is responsible for the authentication, authorization and accounting. Any entity that wishes to connect to the EUNOMIA infrastructure needs to communicate with this server.

- The Discovery Server provides means to allow the discovery of other services and corresponding metadata, including their public keys

- deleted posts will be removed from associated cascades, P2P databases and the EUNOMIA Blockchain ledger

>currently

I've been on and off Mastodon since 2016 and there is always tumblr-style drama about how Eugen is a dictator for not doing <whatever> with everyone's instance.

Yeah that's what i assumed also, which is why i didn't suggest that the maintainer is actually malevolent in my parent comment.

Also, to be fair, if the European Commission is funding a large-scale surveillance program for decentralized social media, i'm glad some of that money is actually going to free-software maintainers to improve the ecosystem, and not all of it into the wrong pockets (as is usually the case).

the "open letter" against Eugen Rochko is a load of garbage and he doesn't owe anyone an absolute thing. He created the software, he's the BDFL*, and can do whatever he wants with it now.

My thought is there's nothing stopping this letter's author from developing either a fork or their own fedi/AP compliant software.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life

Isn't that the whole point? Seems like these people don't understand open source and they want to take over his "baby" rather than going out and making their on even though they can clone his in under a minute and change it to their liking and own sphere of influence.

I really wonder how Bluesky [1] (Twitter's project of project to build a decentralized social media protocol) will take ActivityPub and especially Mastodon into account… Both the W3C and RetroShare have reacted to the news on Twitter [2] but are totally ignored so far.

[1] https://blueskyweb.org/

[2] https://twitter.com/jack/status/1204766078468911106

A wild guess would be that he is trying to remake a centralised decentralised Twitter. I think he just wants to keep one hand in somewhere that can be spun as something else when Twitter will start being unbearable if it hasn’t already. Something like the Banks first dissing crypto and now lining up to make “their own crypto”.

I mean who knows. But he not even acknowledging ActivityPub in any of those N insipid tweets, even after being reminded by others, says volumes about his intentions.

Until someone from the Bluesky leadership team officially stands up their own AP-speaking site, I wouldn't expect them to commit to anything.

On the other hand, they've been quick to build a community around a proprietary/closed/centralized service (Discord).

Bare minimum would be to stand up a WP site with the ActivityPub Plugin for feeding back their statuses to the existing standards-based social web.

Mastodon is an ActivityPub implementation, right? So does that mean Mastodon can interact with other AP implementations? Or do they add some additional stuff that doesn’t interop?

It can and does. e.g., a Mastodon account can subscribe to one on PeerTube.

Yes. I subscribe to a few write.as blogs and Pixelfed accounts from my Mastodon account.

Is it really complete list of communities available through Mastodon or is there more? Looks pretty tiny so far.

There's also https://instances.social/ and https://fediverse.party/en/mastodon

I suppose it’s a moot point?

This is the way we defeat stalker capitalists who are trading trinkets to the natives for land. The core functionality of FaceCrook, Twatter and Instaglam doesn't require $billions. The data we pay for these services is worth so much more that the exchange is essentially theft.

I have no use for a Twatter replacement, but when a non-profit (or benefit corporation) starts up a viable FaceCrook replacement, I will gladly donate.

Facebook makes ~$20 off your data each year (https://www.thegoodestate.com/facebook-arpu/). You might believe your data is worth more than that, but no one is willing to pay more for it.

Regardless, name calling will not engender support for your position, even for people who already have similar ideals.

1. In a capitalist society, I should be able to name the price for something that belongs to me.

2. FaceCrook still has my data after they sell it. Part of their valuation is based on the future value of all the data they have accumulated.

>name calling will not engender support for your position

I find that humor is an effective counter to power. These corporations that are selling the masses trinkets for something of true value while wasting the talents of our "best and brightest" on stalkertech deserve ridicule. Why should I afford these petty crooks any respect?

1. In a capitalist society price is dictated by supply/demand

I would expect Facebook's valuation is less about knowing you like dogs and more on the fact that their advertising system allows people to show dog teeshirts directly to people who like dogs

I'm surprised the average user's data is worth even $20/year

You are severely underestimating (or understating) the power of big data.

You really think their stalkertech amounts to: user#=1337, likes=dogs???

no but back to the economic argument the supply is so significant that no one person's data is worth jack unless they're a politician or something like that. Individually its basically worthless.

Shouldn't I be allowed to set the price for my data? Frankly, I don't want to sell it at all, so these companies are essentially engaging in theft (ergo "FaceCrook"). Due to their network effect monopoly (and the blatant failings of our govt to effectively enforce anti-trust laws and to generally protect consumers from corporate abuse), I am forced to use their platform. Even if I didn't, they would still be stealing my data.

This title needs to be disambiguated. I had assumed that most musicians, and especially prog metal bands, were non-profit by default. I was curious why that had to be made explicit!

lol. No, seriously. I thought it was about a band. sigh.

Hey! So did I! I had hard that one of the members had become sick or something along those lines and figured they were pivoting to an NPO!

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