Support Your Mastodon Instance… And Consider How

Since the death of Twitter, a lot of folks have opted to use Mastodon instead. It’s hardly the only option, with things like Bluesky and Threads also being in the mix. I’ve been splitting my time between Mastodon and Bluesky (I’d highly recommend staying as far away from Threads as possible since anything associated with Meta is about as evil as you can get), with a bit more attention going to Mastodon.

The reason why I — and many others — really enjoy Mastodon is the fact that it’s designed to basically insulate itself from corporate influence. Even with Threads jumping in on ActivityPub, for example, it doesn’t give them any undue control over the larger Fediverse. This is awesome, and while platforms like Mastodon may have some shortcomings compared to their corporate-backed counterparts, this degree of freedom is something reminiscent of the nascent web that many folks are pining for.

However, as a user of a service like Mastodon, it’s easy to forget about how much work goes in to actually operating a platform like a Mastodon instance. Maintaining things like domains, certificates (depending on how you do it… those shouldn’t really cost money in 2024), servers, storage, and bandwidth all add up. This isn’t even including the people-hours that go into things like handling moderation, performing software upgrades, etc.

So with this in mind, I encourage anyone who uses Mastodon to support the instance they use in some way if they have the means. Most instances I’ve used over the years accept donations of some sort, and you can usually find those through Mastodon UI. For example, the platform’s developers who also run mastodon.social and mastodon.online accept donations through Patreon. My Mastodon instance, SDF Social, accepts donations via their support page. I’ve actually used SDF in various capacities for years from IRC to GNU Social, so I’m a huge fan of the work they do, and I’ve had a recurring donation set up for quite some time.

Anything helps and goes a long way to supporting the kind of social media that we want to see in the world. That being said, it’s also important to consider the avenues one has for supporting a Mastodon instance. I highly appreciate the transparency of the team supporting SDF’s Fediverse efforts in sending out an email last week regarding the funding they’ve received. I won’t reproduce the entire email here, but the important bits are (all numbers USD):

• $6942.30 for co-located servers that run Fediverse offerings.
• $7720.00 in donations via the support page.
• $958.78 in PayPal fees.
• $181.08 as the amount to be covered by SDF.

The obvious tl;dr here is that despite receiving more in donations than required for the co-located servers, PayPal fees means that the SDF team still had to chip in a little under $200 USD to keep everything up and running. That… sucks. When I make my donations, I want the money to go to the cause I’m supporting, not to the payment processor. The cool part is that SDF offers several different avenues to provide support. Along with an online store that has some amazing stickers, they accept donations in a variety of ways.

While you obviously want to maybe think a bit about just who you send a personal check to, if you trust the source then doing something like a check or money order to support your Mastodon instance (if they offer it) may be a better option than doing something through PayPal or Patreon since it means that the people hosting the service can reap the full value from the donation rather than having a payment processor take a (potentially significant) cut.

In the end, any amount that folks can spare through any means to support the Fediverse is welcome, but at least consider if the means by which you’re donating is the most effective for making sure that the majority of your donation is going to the cause you want to support!