cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1239521
Reddit used to have something similar to health bar showing how much “gold” was bought to support the website. but later on out of greed they started using it as a paywall.
We can have a health bar that doesnt paywall ANY features and very transparently displays funds raised\used for a server. It can be used to display how much funds its being supported, how much server costs are, salaries for open source maintainers, mods, etc.
How is that supposed to work, though?
Like, say I’m wildly corrupt and taking money to push stories about Smurfs. Big Gargamel sends me $1K a month to use my influence to seed stories that talk negatively about the Smurfs. I don’t say shit. Big Gargamel doesn’t say shit. How would the “undeclared funding” bar know?
Just the same way the funding bar works. As long as no one is lying, confused, lazy, mistaken or busy it’s bulletproof.
Ah. Of course. People will declare the undeclared money they receive.
You’ve got it!
People just won’t lie about ill gotten gains, tax returns or funding on lemmy instances. The green bar will be truth.