7mo ago

“Mastodon for Harris” is a Success Story for Fediverse Activism

wedistribute.org “Mastodon for Harris” is a Success Story for Fediverse Activism

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.

politics @lemmy.world

isaacd @lemmy.world

7mo ago

"Mastodon for Harris" fediverse campaign raises half a million dollars

wedistribute.org /2024/08/mastodon-for-harris/

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Fediverse @lemmy.world

Sean Tilley @lemmy.world

7mo ago

“Mastodon for Harris” is a Success Story for Fediverse Activism

wedistribute.org /2024/08/mastodon-for-harris/

644 47

34 comments

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.
  
  Haha there already is a huge political candidate using mastodon - truth.social, ugh.
- 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.

If you’re interested in supporting Vance, Ashley Furniture gift cards are preferred.
- I believe the couches have a collective restraining order against him.
  
  What’s about donating bear cub corpses to Kennedy?

The rhetoric of this fundraising was that it would encourage the Harris campaign to have an official presence on mastodon which would legitimize and spread awareness of the fediverse. This has not happened and as far as I can tell the Harris campaign has not even acknowledged that mastodon exists let alone make an account or instance.
This reminds me of an event on reddit which paralleled the pathetic "If I give enough money maybe senpai will notice me" vibes. Back in 2013 some starcraft players got the idea that if they organized to buy enough pizzas from PapaJohn's then it would convince the company to sponsor starcraft tournaments and push esports into the mainstream (esports were niche at this time and starcraft was the major esport).
Here's a

post celebrating raising thousands of dollars for a company that materially opposed medicare for all (wasn't kidding about the democrat parallels). What did they get out of this? a vague tweet about esports that didn't even acknowledge the campaign. PapaJohns would go on to sponsor an esports tournament... in 2022 well after esports had become mainstream on it's own and sponsorships like this were tailist rather than pioneering. For extra injury that PapaJohns tournament was for smashbros with the starcraft community that organized this cringe campaign by then long dead and buried.
- bro we tried to get trump on the fedi but he just made his own not-fedi instead.
  
  Tbf, everyone would have defederated from it anyways

Lmao losers donated a drop in the bucket of the DNC warchest for a fascist cop.

Political Organizing
Giving money to genocidal millionaires

"political organizing"

I’m not American, What’s with the coconut?
- 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."
  
  incidentally, kamala's dad and mom are Jamaican and Indian respectively and the coconut is reminiscent of her background
- It's a reference to an anecdote that Harris apparently uses frequently.
  That's all I know, never cared enough to learn a politicians' lore.

I feel like I'm gonna 🤮

- Cool.
- Wanna explain why or just wanna complain?
  
  "Grassroots organization raises $500k for the establishment"
- Stay square then

Jesus are they trying to get Trump into office again?
- ?
  
  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.

34 comments