A grassroots fundraising campaign for the 2024 election is trending towards half a million dollars raised by Fediverse members.
The Mastodon For Harris campaign has raised close to $500,000 within two weeks of being live. It is probably the largest attempt for political organizing on the Fediverse, and may provide a playbook for other efforts going forward.
I mean... everyone is free to spend their money on what they want pretty much, but the marginal benefit of these 500k on the Harris campaign is very low, while the same money would go a long way supporting Fediverse development and maintenance.
Regardless of how you feel about it, it's still notable that people on the Fediverse managed to scrape $500k together. This is the first time something like that has ever happened on this network. In the world of big politics and presidential campaigns, it's not much. However, within the scope of grassroots organizing, it's substantial.
I agree that I would love to see that funding go towards mutual aid, infra and project funding, and supporting people who work on different parts of the network.
The goal is not only to support the Harris campaign but also to raise the visibility of Mastodon including possibly an official Harris for President presence there. I believe the fundraiser has already convinced ACTBlue to include a share on Mastodon link.
It's incredible how little people spend on free software :(
I used to have a dream of developing free software and launched a couple of big projects (thousands of github stars, millions of downloads) and no one fucking pays for anything no matter how easy you make it and how critical your software is to them.
To give some perspective - some Youtubers earn same amount annually from Patreon than both Gnome and KDE yearly budgets combined (which is ~3M usd).
I realized that the only way to fund something is to make people pay either through early releases, insider programs or something that forces the credit card form on them. That's the only way.
It was a blend of a bit of quirky humor followed by a more profound message that Kamala Harris attributes to her mother: "You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you."
The US is committing a genocide. Most people won't bother going to the polls for a candidate that supports the genocide.
Of the people that support the genocide, most of them are Trump supporters. This is basically what happened to get Trump elected the first term. Sanders wasn't running, so people didn't go out to vote.