@deadsuperhero there feels there really should be some middle ground between "Big Capitalism" and allowing (even encouraging) people to make some money from what they do.

@deadsuperhero as a (tiny!) business on Mastodon I agree. I'm on Mastodon as it's "the right thing to do" and also because I actually personally enjoy using it! But from a business perspective it's pointless. I have 37 followers on Mastodon, 5800 on Facebook, 881 on Insta (which I barely even use!) and 2100 on YouTube. I'd love to support Peertube, but the audience is so small that it just doesn't get the videos seen. Allowing some monetisation might encourage more creators and a virtuous circle

@deadsuperhero

Absolutely!

(Although whether any such effort could address the discriminatory and harmful policies of payment service providers is another issue...)

@deadsuperhero

In particular, we need some framework that can replace Facebook business pages. These replace business web pages in much of the world, especially for small businesses.

They also need to be able to connect with assorted payment systems, of course.

@deadsuperhero

Maybe in Europe Union we will have a digital euro within a couple of years.
That would allow free api with no commission, for a digital currency with legal tender.

@deadsuperhero
I'm sympathetic to that proposal but I think it could go further. Again, not "big capitalism" but I think there's room for other commerce, such as the commerce of ideas and skills. If there were:
* 'guilds' for different practices.
* 'reputations' for different levels of expertise, experience & quality.
* 'commonrooms' to make sharing skills or knowledge easier and allow persistence
* 'libraries' of tutorials
* 'badges' to introduce a consistent quality & currency of skill levels & recognized qualifications.
* 'markets', places where people go to buy goods but not underpinned by any profiling, algorithms, or advert driven push capitalism.

@deadsuperhero absolutely, 100%. @manyfold is on that list too.

@deadsuperhero I don't think you should be flamed for this at all. Any Fedi instance could easily benefit with a payment solution simply for server costs - an integrated solution is much better than handling that externally, and you could grant things like, a little "support" badge on someone's profile, as an example, a shoutout on their About page, things like that.

I'd rather pay my instance admin directly through here instead of Ko-Fi, which is the case right now.

@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org
Open Bazaar was amazing before it died. Too bad the platform never took off for more legitimate purposes. Fedi would be a magical place if somehow we could incorporate Open Bazaar into it.

It is, after all, what Elon Musk is trying to build with X.

@deadsuperhero Totally agree! "Commerce" - not corporate capitalism.