The Fediverse and Content Creation: Monetization
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about PeerTube, Loops, Bandwagon, and other platforms in the Fediverse that are geared around artists. I might get flamed for this, and you’re welcome to disagree, but I think the network is in dire need of having support for commerce.
Not “Big Capitalism” commerce, but the ability for people to buy and sell things, support projects, and commission their favorite creators to keep making more stuff.
The Fediverse and Content Creation: Monetization
One thing that I've been thinking about for a while: the PeerTube platform is somewhat limited in providing tools for video-makers to receive financial support. At best, PeerTube offers a "Support" button on videos, but all this really does is provide a lightbox with links to various donation pages.It's better than nothing, but not by much.
I actually think this is a bit of a problem when it comes to getting creators to use platforms such as PeerTube or Loops. A lot of people don't really see a point in joining a whole new ecosystem when they're well-established on YouTube or Tiktok to begin with, and a lack of financial incentives might make this seem like an exercise in futility.The majority of this post is going to be focusing on financial support mechanisms specifically, but I want to be clear that this alone is not a silver bullet solution. It's just something that I think requires a lot of attention first. I'm going to talk about a few things the Fediverse ecosystem offers to mitigate this problem, with some thoughts on how we can better support video makers on federated platforms.
Payments, Access, and Friction
There are a few sticking points here that are worth thinking about. First and foremost is that, historically speaking, most Fediverse platforms don't offer good mechanisms for providing access to special paid content. From my limited understanding, there are two parts to think about:
- Payment Systems - payments in the Fediverse is still kind of a nascent, fledgling thing. A few systems offer the capability of buying or selling things through one or two major payment processing systems, and it's usually Stripe or PayPal. Part of the headache here is that this situation inherently props up a few monopolistic platforms, rather than allowing people to use whatever payment system is available in their own countries. Some of this can be worked around using cryptocurrencies – famously, the Mitra project leverages Monero for this very purpose, although I'm told it now can accept other forms of payment as well.
- Account Access - Historically speaking, the lion's share of Fediverse platforms lack a granular system for granting permissions to remote accounts. Most platforms in the Fediverse emulate Mastodon's privacy scopes, which don't do the best job of delegating which groups of people can see or interact with something. Either everybody can see a post, or just your mutuals can. Complicating things even further, there's not a great way to set something visible to a specific someone and let them know about it, unless you're specifically sending them a Private Message directly.
What's Available Today
There are a few cutting-edge attempts to solve this problem, and I think they might offer different pieces of the puzzle.Premium Users
One PeerTube plugin I have a lot of admiration for is simply called Premium Users, and it does exactly what you'd expect. PeerTube channels that have this integration set up offer a special paid subscription button on their pages, and it does two things:
- It takes a Stripe transaction to process payments.
- It takes note of which Fediverse accounts made this transaction, and adds them to a special group that can see videos intended specifically for them.
On paper, this is great! We at least have a proof-of-concept to say that hey, this thing is in fact doable. Unfortunately, there are a few shortcomings:
- Limited Utility — people can only get this special access by clicking the button on PeerTube. If they tried to pay you out of band, through something like Patreon or Kofi, there isn't a way to easily set up their Fediverse account as Premium Subscribers. The payment system has no concept of what their Fediverse identity is, and the manual way for adding people is kind of messy and confusing.
- Rigid Scope — the plugin basically has to get set up by an admin, and use their Stripe account. Users then upgrade their own PeerTube accounts to add payment, and they get upgraded to a special user type. Anyone with that user type can see "Premium" videos from anybody on the instance, and the money only goes to the instance admin. This is less than ideal.
- Vendor Limitations — it only works with Stripe at the moment, which is not necessarily what other people are using to make simple donations. Trying to account for multiple vendors might be challenging, as it means that such an integration has to abstract away the specific vendors in another layer. This is not impossible, but can be somewhat cumbersome if you're trying to just offer a simple plugin that's easy to set up.
Unfortunately, this is kind of a deal-breaker if you wanted to create something similar to YouTube's "Channel Membership" feature for the Fediverse. It's less Patreon-like, and more like a way to see all the exclusive paywalled media in one place.
At the very least, we have a proof-of-concept on how to at least broker access to special content on PeerTube using payments. It's not perfect, but maybe it could be a foundation to build on?Granular Permissions / Circles
Some of the most impressive development on this front comes from the Bonfire project, because their system actually lets people put their contacts into special collections.
Circles, which are Bonfire's concept for addressable groups, and Boundaries, which are the permission sets that can be assigned to them.
While it can be a little bit tedious to set up manually, the main thing to understand is that this works really, really well. You can have as many collections as you'd like, they can all have special rules applied to them, and you can decide which collections can see which things you post.
This can easily get super, super comprehensive. The UX definitely still needs some love to make it easier to manage.
From a technical perspective, I see Bonfire as a shining example for what all Fediverse platforms should follow: we need to think about access, permissions, and addressing for posts, all at the same time. You can create special custom presets today, and scope it to a specific group of people.
While I think the UX behind this is still complicated, I think the concept is solid, and a simplified version could be a very powerful way to create special scopes of friends or followers.Paid Circles
The Emissary project has been thinking long and hard about this problem by offering Circles, which are the very user collections we've been talking about up to this point. For their Bandwagon application, the lead dev has been thinking a lot about music sales, as well as different ways to support artists. As a result, the UX is very much simplified, and more user-friendly.
Examples of how different Circles can be set up as support tiers for artists.
Bandwagon does something neat by allowing musicians to turn membership of a specific Circle into a paid subscription. This allows artists to create special private things.posts, share events for secret shows, and even offer special tracks and albums to the people supporting them.
spectra.video/videos/embed/eod…
The lead dev, Ben Pate, has gone on the record in stating a desire to support many different payment providers in order to avoid monopolization of just one or two big vendors. He gave a really good presentation about the subject back in August for FediCon 2025, and it's worth watching.CrowdBucks
CrowdBucks is still a relative newcomer to the space, and offers a few novel approaches that are worth thinking about. It's open source, and you can host it yourself, and the project acts as a wrapper around payment integrations to provide payment status, as well as subscriber information. That includes Fediverse handles!
A demo of a CrowdBucks fundraising page.
What really sets CrowdBucks apart is this: you don't actually create an account, in the traditional sense. Instead, you log in with your existing Fediverse identity, which then allows you to financially support whoever you want, while also allowing you to do fundraising for yourself.
One other benefit I see to having services like CrowdBucks is the benefit of decoupling payment infrastructure away from Fediverse instances. Rather than trying to get a bunch of different platforms and instances to try to juggle Stripe and PayPal API keys for admins and users, it would probably be way easier to just handle the actual payment action on a separate layer outside of the social platforms themselves. Instead of every creator trying to sign into a bunch of different services, they could just authenticate against their CrowdBucks payment server instead.
Honorable Mention: Mitra
Although the project isn't as well-known as some of the other efforts on here, it's important to acknowledge Mitra and what it has pioneered. In a nutshell, this is a simple, stylish Fediverse platform that has paid subscription capabilities built in.
Subscribing to an account results in a dialogue to determine how much you're supporting a creator per month.
In a lot of ways, Mitra predates almost all of the other attempts to incorporate payments into the Fediverse. The lead dev behind it, Silverpill, is very active in the Fediverse Enhancement Proposals community, which aims to help extend ActivityPub capabilities in a somewhat standardized, grassroots way.
Posting to just your Paid Subscribers works out of the box!
Mitra has experienced some friction in being adopted by the wider Fediverse due to an ideological divide: historically, the platform has only supported Monero for payment, and the wider Fediverse itself doesn't generally hold a positive view on cryptocurrencies to begin with. A recent release no longer strictly requires Monero, but some glue code would still need to be written to support payment processors.Putting It All Together
So, we have all of these different pieces. Can we use them together to accomplish what we want?Let's say that we use CrowdBucks as the middleware that wraps around potentially many different payment solutions. It offers an API, can capture information about who is paying you for something, and can potentially even denote what thing they're paying for specifically. Great! Upon initial payment, a special follow request could get forwarded to the creator's account, which automatically gets approved upon proof of payment.
A plugin or integration could directly hook up to CrowdBucks, and then automatically put that paid subscriber into a dedicated Circle as a permission scope that can see stuff intended just for them. Additionally, this special follow request could also enable special notifications that tells the subscriber when new stuff is available to them.
A lapse in payment or cancellation could also be handled automatically through CrowdBucks, resulting in the Subscriber being automatically removed from the Circle after a set period of time.
Limitations
This concept is not without a few different headaches. Let's talk about them.Currency Support
While a fair amount of payment processors are set up to handle international currency exchanges, the experience could be messier for platforms that aren't set up to handle it.This is particularly glaring in situations where one person might want to pay with cryptocurrency, and the recipient doesn't actually accept that.
What might make sense is for CrowdBucks to allow people to plug in a multitude of different payment providers, defaulting to a "path of equilibrium" where the payee and recipient both go through whatever payment system they both have in common. The alternative is to basically establish some kind of escrow/transfer service for money in various forms, and that can get pretty complicated.
Fediverse Identity
Identity in the Fediverse is still somewhat flaky and non-standard. The secret sauce that CrowdBucks uses for Fediverse Login is really just a series of platform-specific integrations, such as "Sign in With Mastodon", "Sign in With Pixelfed", and "Sign in With PeerTube".Good concept overall, but lack of a uniform solution is killing us. Source: GreatApe
This isn't a great experience for anyone that's not using those specific platforms. Theoretically, we should all be using the ActivityPub Client-To-Server API for platform-agnostic Identity Login, but the biggest players such as Mastodon have yet to really embrace C2S in any way, shape, or form.If we could all rally around C2S for at least this singular use-case, we might be able to have a universal login system for the entire network.
Ecosystem Support
Finally, the biggest headache here is buy-in. It's very challenging to get a bunch of different groups of people to align to a common set of goals, implementations, and methodologies.My thinking here is simple: if we can get some level of integration working for PeerTube, Pixelfed, Loops, and any other federated platform where such a thing might be handy, we might be able to make major strides in solving this problem.
I'm Still Optimistic
While I think we still have a long way to go before we get to a place where there's a clear-cut "standard experience" on how these things should happen, it's evident that there are a lot of pieces being developed that could be made to work together.I hold the view that commerce, understood through the lens of "the marketplace or bazaar at the center of town", could be extremely beneficial for the Fediverse. If we are to build this thing, it's going to require a lot of careful consideration, with different builders comparing notes on how they're currently doing it.
Anyway, thanks for reading!
What is PeerTube? | JoinPeerTube
A free software to take back control of your videos! With more than 600,000 hosted videos, viewed more than 70 millions times and 150,000 users, PeerTube is the decentralized free software alternative to videos platforms developed by FramasoftJoinPeerTube
like this
A still life that I tried to reshoot, ten years later.
The components from the original take were still here, so I used them just as they were. Only differences were that I had shot the original (below) with an iPhone 6+ and I shot the modern take (above) with my Canon EOS Rebel T7; and that I rotated the gaff card in the middle of the frame to be true to my intentions, as I had many regrets once I published the original work.
Thank you for seeing my work!
Costco sues the Trump administration, seeking a refund of tariffs
Costco sues the Trump administration, seeking a refund of tariffs
Costco Wholesale sued the Trump administration in the Court of International Trade, seeking a refund of tariffs imposed under an emergency powers law.Steve Kopack (NBC News)
This Is the Story of How the Democrats Blew It on Gaza
cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/39748429
archive.ph/ErKmx[Bias alert - #NYT usually favors Israel]
Opinion - Guest Essay
Ben Rhodes
During the Biden presidency, it was short-handed the “hug Bibi” strategy — the idea that smothering Mr. Netanyahu with unconditional support would give the U.S. leverage to influence his actions. Over the final 15 months of the Biden presidency, this approach led the White House to provide a flood of weapons for Israel’s bombardment of Palestinians, veto United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for a cease-fire, attack the International Criminal Court for pursuing charges against Mr. Netanyahu, ignore its own policies about supporting military units credibly accused of war crimes and blame Hamas for not accepting cease-fire terms that the Israeli government was also rejecting.
This Is the Story of How the Democrats Blew It on Gaza
[Bias alert - #NYT usually favors Israel]
Opinion - Guest Essay
Ben RhodesDuring the Biden presidency, it was short-handed the “hug Bibi” strategy — the idea that smothering Mr. Netanyahu with unconditional support would give the U.S. leverage to influence his actions. Over the final 15 months of the Biden presidency, this approach led the White House to provide a flood of weapons for Israel’s bombardment of Palestinians, veto United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for a cease-fire, attack the International Criminal Court for pursuing charges against Mr. Netanyahu, ignore its own policies about supporting military units credibly accused of war crimes and blame Hamas for not accepting cease-fire terms that the Israeli government was also rejecting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/opinion/democrats-israel.html
like this
This Is the Story of How the Democrats Blew It on Gaza
cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/39748429
archive.ph/ErKmx[Bias alert - #NYT usually favors Israel]
Opinion - Guest Essay
Ben Rhodes
During the Biden presidency, it was short-handed the “hug Bibi” strategy — the idea that smothering Mr. Netanyahu with unconditional support would give the U.S. leverage to influence his actions. Over the final 15 months of the Biden presidency, this approach led the White House to provide a flood of weapons for Israel’s bombardment of Palestinians, veto United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for a cease-fire, attack the International Criminal Court for pursuing charges against Mr. Netanyahu, ignore its own policies about supporting military units credibly accused of war crimes and blame Hamas for not accepting cease-fire terms that the Israeli government was also rejecting.
This Is the Story of How the Democrats Blew It on Gaza
[Bias alert - #NYT usually favors Israel]
Opinion - Guest Essay
Ben RhodesDuring the Biden presidency, it was short-handed the “hug Bibi” strategy — the idea that smothering Mr. Netanyahu with unconditional support would give the U.S. leverage to influence his actions. Over the final 15 months of the Biden presidency, this approach led the White House to provide a flood of weapons for Israel’s bombardment of Palestinians, veto United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for a cease-fire, attack the International Criminal Court for pursuing charges against Mr. Netanyahu, ignore its own policies about supporting military units credibly accused of war crimes and blame Hamas for not accepting cease-fire terms that the Israeli government was also rejecting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/opinion/democrats-israel.html
China’s Grip on American Medicine Cabinets Grows More Entrenched
China’s Grip on American Medicine Cabinets Grows More Entrenched
A US congressional commission is ringing alarm bells about China’s growing dominance over America’s drug supply, saying it is putting the country’s health in the hands of an adversarial nation.Anna Edney (Bloomberg)
'Imperial Israel’ in the New Middle East
cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/39747783
archive.ph/jphZ9[Bias alert - NYT usually favors Israel]
By Roger Cohen
Nov. 26, 2025[on-site, in-depth report from Lebanon, with many photos]
Abbas Fakhr al-Din, the soft-spoken mayor of Nabatieh, a city in southern Lebanon, sat beneath a portrait of Ahmad Kahil, a doctor and his predecessor. Dr. Kahil was killed in an Israeli strike on the municipal building on Oct. 16, 2024, that took the lives of 16 people in all. The rubble remains.I asked Mr. al-Din if he was afraid. “No,” he said. “I have to be with my people through good times and bad.”
Nabatieh and the surrounding area continue to be hit by intermittent Israeli strikes, killing people and heightening the sense that the cease-fire is even less stable than Lebanon’s battered buildings. To the mayor’s eyes, American strategy is devoted solely to support of Israel.
'Imperial Israel’ in the New Middle East
[Bias alert - NYT usually favors Israel]
By Roger Cohen
Nov. 26, 2025[on-site, in-depth report from Lebanon, with many photos]
Abbas Fakhr al-Din, the soft-spoken mayor of Nabatieh, a city in southern Lebanon, sat beneath a portrait of Ahmad Kahil, a doctor and his predecessor. Dr. Kahil was killed in an Israeli strike on the municipal building on Oct. 16, 2024, that took the lives of 16 people in all. The rubble remains.I asked Mr. al-Din if he was afraid. “No,” he said. “I have to be with my people through good times and bad.”
Nabatieh and the surrounding area continue to be hit by intermittent Israeli strikes, killing people and heightening the sense that the cease-fire is even less stable than Lebanon’s battered buildings. To the mayor’s eyes, American strategy is devoted solely to support of Israel.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/world/middleeast/imperial-israel-in-the-new-middle-east.html
How did the Ad Networks find my search?
So a bit ago I got an add for "canned rambutan". I had looked up Rambutan a few days prior after hearing it mentioned 10 hours into the video game Baby Steps. I wasn't using a VPN at the time and I didn't have fingerprinting protections active but I only mentioned it to a few sources (according to my browser history) all of which generally are implied to be private.
Which of these do you think is the reason the ad networks know?
- Wikipedia
- Startpage Search
- Duckduckgo Search
- My ISP
- Firefox
- My Firefox Extensions
- Kubuntu
- CachyOS
- The omnipotent algorithm connecting my mentions of Baby Steps with my progress through the game.
- Does this only make sense if my browser history is incomplete?
- Maybe I was using DNS over HTTPS via Cloudflare at the time of my search.
Any guesses as to where the weak link is?
It's duckduckgo. Search duckduckgo.com with the term "restaurants near me." You'll often get responses that are close to your IP location.
That couldn't happen unless DDG passes your IP address on to Bing. It's possible they censor part of the IP and only pass part of it to Bing, but probably not.
(Go ahead! Try it!)
Since Bing sells to data brokers, data brokers know your IP is linked to a search for rambutan, even without fingerprinting your browser.
I'm not calling duckduckgo.com a honeypot... I'm also not calling it not a honeypot. But it knows too much for something supposedly private.
Any closed source firefox extension that has access to the browser display could be parsing the texts and selling it and your IP and other identifiers to data brokers. It's part of how these extensions are profitable.
Cloudflare also does highly advanced fingerprinting and has a script called cloudflare insights, so it seems likely that any cloudflare activity is generating marketing data.
'Imperial Israel’ in the New Middle East
cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/39747783
archive.ph/jphZ9[Bias alert - NYT usually favors Israel]
By Roger Cohen
Nov. 26, 2025[on-site, in-depth report from Lebanon, with many photos]
Abbas Fakhr al-Din, the soft-spoken mayor of Nabatieh, a city in southern Lebanon, sat beneath a portrait of Ahmad Kahil, a doctor and his predecessor. Dr. Kahil was killed in an Israeli strike on the municipal building on Oct. 16, 2024, that took the lives of 16 people in all. The rubble remains.I asked Mr. al-Din if he was afraid. “No,” he said. “I have to be with my people through good times and bad.”
Nabatieh and the surrounding area continue to be hit by intermittent Israeli strikes, killing people and heightening the sense that the cease-fire is even less stable than Lebanon’s battered buildings. To the mayor’s eyes, American strategy is devoted solely to support of Israel.
'Imperial Israel’ in the New Middle East
[Bias alert - NYT usually favors Israel]
By Roger Cohen
Nov. 26, 2025[on-site, in-depth report from Lebanon, with many photos]
Abbas Fakhr al-Din, the soft-spoken mayor of Nabatieh, a city in southern Lebanon, sat beneath a portrait of Ahmad Kahil, a doctor and his predecessor. Dr. Kahil was killed in an Israeli strike on the municipal building on Oct. 16, 2024, that took the lives of 16 people in all. The rubble remains.I asked Mr. al-Din if he was afraid. “No,” he said. “I have to be with my people through good times and bad.”
Nabatieh and the surrounding area continue to be hit by intermittent Israeli strikes, killing people and heightening the sense that the cease-fire is even less stable than Lebanon’s battered buildings. To the mayor’s eyes, American strategy is devoted solely to support of Israel.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/world/middleeast/imperial-israel-in-the-new-middle-east.html
'Imperial Israel’ in the New Middle East
[Bias alert - NYT usually favors Israel]
By Roger Cohen
Nov. 26, 2025
[on-site, in-depth report from Lebanon, with many photos]
Abbas Fakhr al-Din, the soft-spoken mayor of Nabatieh, a city in southern Lebanon, sat beneath a portrait of Ahmad Kahil, a doctor and his predecessor. Dr. Kahil was killed in an Israeli strike on the municipal building on Oct. 16, 2024, that took the lives of 16 people in all. The rubble remains.I asked Mr. al-Din if he was afraid. “No,” he said. “I have to be with my people through good times and bad.”
Nabatieh and the surrounding area continue to be hit by intermittent Israeli strikes, killing people and heightening the sense that the cease-fire is even less stable than Lebanon’s battered buildings. To the mayor’s eyes, American strategy is devoted solely to support of Israel.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/world/middleeast/imperial-israel-in-the-new-middle-east.html
Corrupt Ukrainian officials could have bagged over $100 billion in Western aid – former PM
Corrupt Ukrainian officials could have bagged over $100 billion in Western aid – former PM
Ukrainian officials could have stolen up to 30% of the $360 billion provided by the West, former Prime Minister Nikolay Azarov has claimedRT
Well, but that's kind of how it works.
If you say something positive about yourself, it's not worth anything. But if an adversary says something positive about you, it has meaning because they are not incentivized to say the thing.
Canada’s “Diversification” Trade Deal Is a Gift to Autocrats
The UAE is facing increasing scrutiny for its increasingly imperial foreign policy. It participated in the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen and backs a separatist movement in the former South Yemen.More controversial is its alleged support for the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that are battling the Sudanese military. The RSF's campaign for control of Sudan has reached genocidal proportions, with nearly 30,000 killed in the city of El Fasher in only a few days, according to Minni Minnawi, the governor of Darfur region, where El Fasher is located.
For Canada to announce that it is seeking closer ties to the UAE at this moment looks ignorant at best and callous at worst. There are also serious questions as to what benefits this will bring Canada. While the UAE does invest in green energy projects around the world, the Canadian government is signaling that liquefied natural gas (LNG) is to be part of this new relationship. Ottawa is signaling that LNG will feature in this new relationship, a strange move if Canada is serious about its decarbonization commitments.
The idea of natural gas as a "bridging fuel" between dirtier fossil fuels like coal and renewables is largely a mirage. Recent research on China --- the world's biggest coal consumer and LNG importer --- finds that rising LNG imports have not reduced or slowed the country's coal usage and still plays only a marginal role in its power mix. Instead, it is wind and solar that are squeezing coal out, and these renewables are now cheaper than gas-fired power.
Darfur Governor Minni Minnawi says RSF killed 27,000 Sudanese in el-Fasher
The governor of Darfur, Minni Arko Minnawi, has told Middle East Eye that 27,000 Sudanese were killed in just three days as paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) went on a killing spree after seizing el-Fasher late last month.Peter Oborne (Middle East Eye)
Venezuela calls on OPEC to counter US threats
Venezuela calls on OPEC to counter US threats
Maduro asks oil-producing bloc to help protect Venezuela’s oil reserves from US ‘aggression’.Lyndal Rowlands (Al Jazeera)
India forces WhatsApp and Telegram into permanent SIM binding
cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/54163653
The Indian telecommunications authority, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), has instructed eight messenger services to implement a permanent binding to inserted SIM cards. Affected are WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Snapchat, ShareChat, as well as the Indian services Arattai, JioChat, and Josh. According to the directive, the companies must ensure within 90 days that their services can only be used with a physically inserted SIM card.
India forces WhatsApp and Telegram into permanent SIM binding
The Indian telecommunications authority, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), has instructed eight messenger services to implement a permanent binding to inserted SIM cards. Affected are WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Snapchat, ShareChat, as well as the Indian services Arattai, JioChat, and Josh. According to the directive, the companies must ensure within 90 days that their services can only be used with a physically inserted SIM card.
India forces WhatsApp and Telegram into permanent SIM binding
India's telecom authority DoT mandates permanent SIM binding for messenger services. WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal must comply within 90 days.Malte Kirchner (heise online)
like this
The Session Protocol: A new standard for decentralised private messaging
It’s time for a new encryption protocol built from the ground up for decentralised secure messaging. Introducing the Session Protocol.Session
‘Don’t want a slave’s peace’: Maduro hits back after Trump ultimatum; tensions surge
Sources told the Miami Hearld that during the call Trump had pressed Maduro to leave “right away”, offering guarantees for his family only if he resigned on the spot. Maduro reportedly refused and instead put forward counter-demands, including global amnesty and the ability to retain control of the armed forces even if he ceded political power.
According to the Miami Herald, there has been no further communication since, despite Maduro’s attempt to secure a second call after Trump declared Venezuelan airspace “closed in its entirety”.
‘Don’t want a slave’s peace’: Maduro hits back after Trump ultimatum; tensions surge
US News: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro rejected a \"slave's peace\" amid escalating US pressure, accusing Washington of testing the nation with a prolongedTOI World Desk (The Times Of India)
China’s currency push gains ground as Russia nears issuance of yuan bond
China’s currency push gains ground as Russia nears issuance of yuan bond
Foreign governments have raised a record 13 billion yuan (US$1.8 billion) via yuan bonds this year, Bloomberg-compiled data shows.Bloomberg (South China Morning Post)
China pares down US Treasury holdings
China pares down US Treasury holdings
China cut its US Treasury holdings by $25.7 billion in July to $730.7 billion, marking the steepest reduction in nearly two years and pushing its holdings to the lowest since 2009, as the country's foreign exchange reserve diversification continued, …global.chinadaily.com.cn
China-Russia cooperation expanding in traditional areas, emerging sectors
Bilateral trade poised for steady growth
China-Russia trade is expected to maintain growth momentum in the coming years, as both countries are actively strengthening business ties in manufacturing, green industries, cross-border e-commerce and other emerging sectors, said market watchers an…global.chinadaily.com.cn
Amusingly, I predicted this exact scenario right at the start of the war, looks like mainstream western press finally figure it out.
Nobody knows whether Russia plans to take over all of Ukraine or merely keep the areas friendly to Russia and make the rest of Ukraine west’s problem. The latter seems a more plausible scenario to me. Russia will likely take areas like Kharkov and Odessa because there is a strong pro Russian sentiment there. Then western Ukraine where the nationalists are will become a rump state without any industry or agriculture. This will become an ongoing burden for the west because the state won’t be able to function on its own, and will require constant flow of money to prevent it from collapsing.
like this
*Per reddit u/pathtracing - Thu Jun 19 08:27:23 2025 UTC - old.reddit.com/r/ipv6/comments…
I think the problem is you (and others) using the term “vpn” to cover various different needs.
There’s:
- actual privacy from network observers, which is about only Mullvad
- exploiting non-technical podcast listeners, which is just about every other product labelled “vpn”
- providing better connectivity, which is Tunnelbroker or a GRE/vxlan provider
- joining the DFZ via a crap isp, which is bgptunnel and various more expensive ones
You want 3 or 4, which is fine. Making item 1 provide a subnet doesn’t help 1 do its job any better and definitely will harm unskilled users.
[Patch Notes] Content Update 0.4.0 — Path of Exile 2: The Last of the Druids
Early Access Patch Notes - Content Update 0.4.0 — Path of Exile 2: The Last of the Druids - Forum - Path of Exile
Path of Exile is a free online-only action RPG under development by Grinding Gear Games in New Zealand.Path of Exile
‘There is no Mamdani effect’: Manhattan luxury home sales surge after mayoral election, undercutting predictions of doom and escape to Florida
In the aftermath of much well-heeled panic about a potential mass exodus of New York millionaires and billionaires following the election of Zohran Mamdani, the contrary is already happening, and Manhattan luxury apartment buyers are voting with their wallets.
Signed contracts for Manhattan homes costing $4 million or more rose to 176 in November, a 25% increase from October’s 141 deals, according to fresh data from brokerage Douglas Elliman and appraiser Miller Samuel. New signed contracts of more than $4 million increased at more than twice the rate of the overall market, the report noted.
‘There is no Mamdani effect’: Manhattan luxury home sales surge after mayoral election, undercutting predictions of doom and escape to Florida
Signed contracts for Manhattan homes over $4 million grew by 25%; “the idea that people would flee New York was overblown,” said realtor Donna Olshan.Sasha Rogelberg (Fortune)
Water is Doug Ford’s latest target for privatization
Authoritarian Doug Ford is privatizing our water - rabble.ca
Water is Doug Ford's latest target for privatization.Paul Kahnert (rabble)
Water is Doug Ford’s latest target for privatization
Authoritarian Doug Ford is privatizing our water - rabble.ca
Water is Doug Ford's latest target for privatization.Paul Kahnert (rabble)
Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business
Russian Forces Liberate Klinovoye Settlement in Donetsk People's Republic
Russian Forces Liberate Klinovoye Settlement in Donetsk People's Republic
Russia's Yug battlegroup took control of the settlement of Klinovoe in the Donetsk People's Republic, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Monday.Sputnik International
Grand jury declines to indict N.Y. Attorney General Letitia James, less than two weeks after the first case was dismissed
Grand jury declines to indict N.Y. Attorney General Letitia James, less than two weeks after the first case was dismissed
The Justice Department on Thursday failed to secure an indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James, a person familiar with the matter told NBC NewsRyan J. Reilly (NBC News)
Maduro may have to bring out their gundams
Look at this imperial hubris:
Maduro has said there are 8 million civilians training in militias, but one source estimated that only thousands of intelligence personnel, armed ruling-party supporters and militia members would really participate in defensive actions.
sources and planning documents seen, but not shared, by Reuterssix unnamed sources familiar with Venezuelan military capabilities said
reuters
the U.S. is seeking regime change to take control of Venezuela's vast oil reserves.
That is the polite way of saying the US wants to destroy Venezuela and steal in natural resources.
Linus vs Linus
- YouTube
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.www.youtube.com
0xtero
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •Surely the ability to pay for things exists already in many forms/platforms.
But one thing that's missing is central financing from the platform itself. The "big tech" is running wild with advertising money and this is what fuels the rapid growth.
Things like Nebula seem to work (creator owned business that offers paid subscriptions), but I'm not sure how many Nebula-exclusive creators there are, I have a feeling most of them publish stuff on YouTube as well.
Mastodon and Lemmy communities work on donations, but most of them just trundle along barely covering hosting costs.
I guess, in theory, it would be possible to create a PeerTube/Loops server that monetizes everything with ads, but I'm a bit skeptical of that unless you have very deep start-up VC money behind you to get you off the ground.
We've had micropayment/-donation sites like Flattr, but it never took off for real.
I think the core problem is trying to make people to pay for the content/service/membership. Most don't. I don't think that would change even if the option was integrated into platforms.
JoYo
in reply to 0xtero • • •0xtero
in reply to JoYo • • •Nutomic
in reply to 0xtero • • •Ads dont really work with federation, because you could simply access the content from another instance which doesnt have ads. Even if ads are directly encoded in the video file, it wouldnt be so hard to add something like sponsorblock to a Peertube instance.
It seems to me that our only chance is to wait for commercial platforms to enshittify and destroy themselves, because we can never compete with the amount of money and resources they have available.
chgxvjh [he/him, comrade/them]
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •The closest we had to this was blockchain web 3.0 and that was a complete trash.
Adding a stripe or PayPal panel to your fediverse thingy really doesn't structurally change anything about e-commerce.
1000s of small instances individually dealing with Mastercard doesn't sound like a good time for anyone.
And other than that there's just more localized payment standards. Maybe that's fine but there's reason SEPA isn't even dominating e-commerce within Europe. From a customer side it's a vastly different experience store to store, and in most cases not a good one. It's also not nearly as easy to integrate into an online store as stripe.
On a less negative note, watch what zkat is building. They started something during the itchio debacle. I'm not super optimistic how much can be done in regards to commerce without addressing payment but maybe they see some path I don't see.
moonshadow
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •0xtero
in reply to moonshadow • • •I tend to agree.
We won't have any "content creators" because it's so hard to monetize fedi - and that's a good thing!
Instead we have people who post stuff they like and are interested in. It's far better system. No ads, no "influencing".
However, it would be great if we could create a better model for sharing hosting costs somehow - bandwidth and servers are not cheap when serving video. Donations work to an extent, but it's always a shaky system based on kindness of select few.
JoYo
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •I PAY money to host these videos.
Absolutely no one is going to commercialize the fedi.
VoxAliorum
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •moretruth
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •𝓒𝓱𝓻𝓲𝓼
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •@Sean Tilley
Hubzilla and faircamp can do the job
#^im.allmendenetz.de/channel/ehm…