From when I was asking about it, I think it’s only the instance admins that can see the details. It would be nice to have this information clearly outlined somewhere, so people know and aren’t surprised.
There’s a potential for abuse with paying for donations (not saying it should never be done):
risk of unsafe blood supplies if people lie about their health history in order to be able to sell their blood
ethical concerns around exploiting financially vulnerable people, and turning a life-saving act into another commercial transaction
In areas where those vulnerable people aren’t protected by the legal system, there’s also the potential of OTHER people “harvesting” and selling the blood
Voluntary and altruistic donations are best, and ideally those values are maintained all the way through the donation process. Hopefully technology continues to improve so that we can support those donations with synthesized alternatives
I believe we’ve had some discussion around this in Canada recently, specifically with donations for plasma. I’m not caught up on it to comment further about it
It’s still helpful to talk about what’s going on elsewhere
see what we can do better
see what good features are worth adopting here
Calling out bad actions by other platforms. We don’t HAVE to help people that aren’t on the Fediverse, but there are a lot of experienced and knowledgeable people on here that can discuss issues and how we can address them
The core issue here is instances disappearing, and That goes into the discussion of the structure of the fediverse right now vs. the fediverse in the future
A dozen big instances feel better now, and I personally wouldn’t make a community on a smaller instance unless I know it is likely to stay up. If it was run by an existing organization for example.
Long term though, I trust existing organizations to set up stable instances that won’t be shut down easily. If a government, school, game company etc. makes an instance it’s not likely to go down. Having lots of instances will look more normal then.
Ultimately we don’t need to do anything differently, I recommend new people join a big instance and then make a new account once they know what instance they like.
note to everyone: please don’t downvote good faith questions
OP asked a pretty reasonable open ended question. There are other people who may be thinking the same, and reading the discussions here might change their minds. Save downvoting for rule breaking / content that’s bad for the community
I have a few friends and family on Signal. Pretty much everyone uses other services too (including myself) but Signal is installed on a few
I talk to some friends / family on Signal exclusively. They either already cared about it, or they’re close enough that they trust my recommendation / still don’t care but want to put in the effort
I talk to some friends / family on Signal only when we want to have a more private conversation
Some people won’t ever be convinced, I talk to them on other services or in person when privacy is important. I set up boundaries to protect myself, and people usually respect that.
This way I protect myself while respecting other people’s choices.
For you I’d recommend focussing on the second option. When you need to talk privately, ask the person to install it and give a short explanation for why it’s better. If they do, then great it’s installed and it’ll get used once in a while. Maybe they will see other people and build up the network. If they don’t install it, then suggest an alternative like talking in person