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I can't speak for the person you asked, but if their hypothetical app were developed by a non-profit company, and the pricing was set at the minimum level to co

I can't speak for the person you asked, but if their hypothetical app were developed by a non-profit company, and the pricing was set at the minimum level to cover the server costs and maintenance staff, would that address your concerns about the intent warping over time? As long as you have trustees making decisions about staffing levels and remuneration (and they can't hire their friends or give themselves salaries), then there should be no incentive to raise the app's pricing or do anything else that would put off users. I do have a novel app monetization strategy to suggest, though, which I've not seen anywhere. Imagine that the monthly costs for the servers and staff were published, along with the number of paying customers that month. There could then be a monthly reverse-lottery where N% of free accounts are chosen at random for deletion, with N being proportional to how much financial loss the app made that month (hopefully zero). The only advantage to having a paid account would be that you are not subject to the lottery, and the only disadvantage to having your account deleted is that you have to reinstall the app and fill in your profile again. Hopefully that would provide enough incentive for people to do the right thing (combined with the fact that people should want to support the services they use, especially if they end up finding their soul mate through it).

sushid 5y ago
So your app actively sabotages its ability to grow a community/app? Doesn't sound reasonable.
andrewflnr 5y ago
Because trustee-run non-profits never get up to inefficient or unethical behavior, right? Also note that "minimum cost of maintenance" is a very flexible concept. How much do we spend on moderation and new features? This is why you want it to be as directly accountable to the users as possible, so they can decide or at least influence those thresholds (there need to be some hard minimum standards for moderation). It might take a while, but as long as it's possible for existing users to pay more, pressure will build up to convince them to do so. Whether because costs go up, usership goes down, or what. Any organization seeks to survive, and it will need money. Your lottery is sufficiently weird that I can't say it's exactly what my proposal is designed to prevent, but it's definitely in the space of wacky things no one should have to worry about. Also I don't think you understand the level of investment that can go into a dating profile. Message history, for instance. To the extent you do have trustees, I'm not sure it's wise to not pay them a salary. You don't really want to give power to people who will accept a power trip in lieu of money. Unless it's really easy for the community to replace them
- PaulHoule 5y ago
  I was thinking of that game Pokemon Sun and Moon where the villainess was the president of a non-profit company, not long after I played it I met a woman who had been a non-profit administrator who I thought looked a bit like Lusamine.

sushid 5y ago

So your app actively sabotages its ability to grow a community/app? Doesn't sound reasonable.

andrewflnr 5y ago

Because trustee-run non-profits never get up to inefficient or unethical behavior, right? Also note that "minimum cost of maintenance" is a very flexible concept. How much do we spend on moderation and new features? This is why you want it to be as directly accountable to the users as possible, so they can decide or at least influence those thresholds (there need to be some hard minimum standards for moderation). It might take a while, but as long as it's possible for existing users to pay more, pressure will build up to convince them to do so. Whether because costs go up, usership goes down, or what. Any organization seeks to survive, and it will need money. Your lottery is sufficiently weird that I can't say it's exactly what my proposal is designed to prevent, but it's definitely in the space of wacky things no one should have to worry about. Also I don't think you understand the level of investment that can go into a dating profile. Message history, for instance. To the extent you do have trustees, I'm not sure it's wise to not pay them a salary. You don't really want to give power to people who will accept a power trip in lieu of money. Unless it's really easy for the community to replace them

PaulHoule 5y ago
I was thinking of that game Pokemon Sun and Moon where the villainess was the president of a non-profit company, not long after I played it I met a woman who had been a non-profit administrator who I thought looked a bit like Lusamine.