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Who owns the Fediverse? I mean who owns and runs the hardware that runs this system? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I've been talking to many people about the controversy with Reddit, why I left it and why I went onto Lemmy, Kbin and Mastadon instead. Some of my friends have commented that the control is still a problem as other platforms and it is all dependent on who owns the software, who owns the hardware, who are the admins, who are the moderators and which community or group has the most influence.

Who are these people that influence the most control on the fediverse? Are they Conservative? Are they Liberal? Are they Republican? Are they Democrat? Do they lean to the left of politics? to the right? or are they center? Are they even political? But also if they had to be would they easily or not so easily influenced?

So .. for the ELI5 version of the question ... Who owns the fediverse?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (8 children)

The sistem is run by a miriad of different servers that are own each by its community, you would have to research more deeply the specific server you want to know the owner of

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (7 children)

That's one of the important questions that concerned me ... who owns the instance I am on. I can appreciate that these systems are all independent of one another and the whole is not controlled by anyone entity or person. But I would like to know who the owner of the instance I am on.

Maybe that should be an important feature to share with everyone up front when you subscribe or sign on to any instance ... a description of who the owners and controllers of the instance are ... who are they, are they just one person? a group? who are they? where are they from?

I understand we have to be private on the internet but if you want to promote being an open and shared universe of users ... one of the most important pieces of information for me is in knowing who pays to run the service I am using for free.

On the flip side of that ... if I know who the owners of the instance are .. and I like them .. then I would be more than willing to send donations or a subscription to help them pay for the services I use.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

The best way to know who owns the service you use it to own it yourself. That does come with a lot of overhead, though. I started my own kbin instance because I, like you, was worried about "what if one day I go to login and my home instance decided to shut off forever?" That can't happen now, besides if I forget to pay/something goes wrong with the server. But I enjoy tinkering so it works out in my case.

I think ultimately users are responsible for which instance they choose to sign up for. If there isn't much transparency on a certain instance, it may not be the one for you. I agree that the sign up pages could have some areas where more information could be shared. Of course, it is up to each instance admin to share accurate and factual information as to who they are/where the money comes from/goes etc.

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