Open Source X will start collecting money with the new donation feature within the application

Mastodon will start the Open Source X and Threads in a new way to raise money: donations inside the application. On Wednesday, the Foundation announced the launch of a campaign that provides banners inside Android and iOS applications, which prompted users to donate a cash.

Initially, the feature will only be displayed on Mastodon Non -profitable It works, Mastodon.social and Mastodon.online. Masterudon says these signs will be easy to separate, and they will be displayed only for people who have accounts for at least four weeks. The Foundation promises that it will not constantly demand users to donate.

Such campaigns can work well for non -profit organizations on a large scale. The Wikimedia Foundation, for example, brings in Majority It is funded by individual donors, including those who donate through pop -up signs that sometimes appear on Wikipedia. However, Mastodon has a much smaller user base: 8.1 million registered Accounts, less than a million active users per month. However, signs can encourage people who have not actively searched for ways to contribute to doing so now, as it makes the process smoother as a feature within the application.

Mastodon says it will expand the campaign later to the web, and if it succeeds, it makes it available to all other Mastodon counterparts. The latter will allow individual server officials to receive direct support from their users, which may help maintain their operation.

As an open platform, not central on social media, Mastodon faces challenges when it comes to financial support. Unlike Meta and X, which is supported by ads, Mastodon It has so far has been adopted so far User donations from Patricion. It also accepted a handful of donations from funds and institutions that focus on the sources open over the years.

in 2023Mastodon 545,000 euros of total donations, with an increase of 65 % on an annual basis, but the Patreon donor base decreased nearly 23 % to 7400 (its report has not yet come out). This decline could have pushed him to search in tactics to collect the most aggressive donations, especially since the competition from Meta and new arrivals such as Bluesky start running VC.

“We know that collecting money can provide complications and questions,” Mastodon Blog said. “We would like to get to know how to do this well, along with society. This is not a campaign to collect donations for companies: it is an attempt to secure the future of a more moral and independent social network.”