- Joined
- Nov 14, 2012
Featured on Dec 7, 2021 by Null: All I want for Christmas is for you to use Brave.
I hate asking for money so hear me out.
It is time for the annual reminder to use Brave and auto-contribute BAT.
Brave is a browser that is a drop-in replacement for Chrome. It is the same software that Chrome uses, but with a gimmick. Brave was made by Brendan Eich, who founded Mozilla and ran it when FireFox was good. Brave blocks most ads (like AdSense) and allows you to opt-in to see ads that pay you back in BAT, a cryptocurrency. You can then send BAT to websites you visit (ours). We cannot run ads, but advertisers with Brave don't select what sites they advertise on, so you bypass that.
It's also the best browser on mobile and comes with native support for some extensions plus the built-in adblocker. Even if the BAT program doesn't work for you on desktop, it will work on mobile.
We have on average 12,000 users that sign in every day. If half of those users who used the site every single day were able to use Brave rewards to send 1 BAT a month, the site would be solvent indefinitely under its current expenses. All I'm asking is people use a different browser and opt-in to ads. I run them myself so I'm not asking you to do something I wouldn't do.
I am usually very secretive about finances because people who want to shut down the site use such information against us. I'll reveal some details to make my point.
Our operational expenses are more than $1000 a month. This is just our tech contracts. $500 of that is datacenter, $200 for Cloudflare, $200 for cloud services, another $150 or so for network allocations. There's various annual license fees, domain fees, and other misc expenses on top of that.
Our legal fees have more than doubled the operational expenses. We're sitting around $25,000 in attorney's fees for 2021 (and that's with attorneys who are sympathetic and have shaved half their hours off their invoices). So, that amounts to just over $2000 a month on average. With those legal scalpers backing Greer to try and score wins for Mickey Mouse and UMG, this will probably only grow in size.
In 2019/2020 I just did merchandise runs to cover the expenses with enough extra to cover the third big category of expense: me. This site is where a lot of my time goes, but I'm trying to save for long-term plans. I want to bring the site with me into the future and I need it to pull its own weight. I'm turning 29 on the 19th and by the end of 2022 I'm going to have to very critically my relationship with the site.
I don't want to be doom and gloom but there's four issues that need to be addressed.
1. Litigation
The site has ongoing litigation and this will probably not stop. Even if Greer and Melinda dropped dead there would be more. We're a big site and if we want to remain uncensored we need to be able to pay to fend off litigious cunts.
2. Software
XenForo will no longer give us updates. We're going to need to make our own forum software, because alternatives to XF suck. We have a team of people already and we're working on getting something together. I'm putting in 8+ hours every day, sometimes from the moment I wake up to the time I go to bed, working on this new project. I hope to have something to show for it by January. I'd like to move us over as soon as we can, probably mid- to late- 2022. I would like to be able to compensate talented developers for their time because people deserve to be paid for their work.
3. DDoS Mitigation
I am still working on a long-term solution for DDoS mitigation. Nobody wants to peer with us. My phone calls and emails don't get answered. The site is basically duct taped together and I am really hoping we can actually just get real mitigation in place at some point.
4. Internal issues
Most people are fortunate enough to never notice internal drama because they read the site for the content and that's it. A lot of people participate in meta drama. I realize I'm an asshole a lot of the time, but I host the site because I like using it. If I didn't like the site or the community I wouldn't put up with it.
I'm dealing with a lot right now. My responsibilities include, but are not limited to: handling letters from suits (check warrant canaries), dealing with lawsuits, dealing with DMCAs/threats, all aspects of the merchandising efforts, our tech stack and the site's operation, and many moderation issues. I'm now trying to squeeze in enough programming to get the new software out. It's more than a full time job, and then on the site itself there are people trying to cause problems for the sake of it.
I might seek some help in managing the community and to try and keep things fun and light-hearted as they should be. The guys that run movie night want to get lolcow.tv set up again and do weekly showings of bad movies, so that sounds like a good place to start.
I'm asking people do two things:
1. Install Brave and figure out the BAT program.
2. Take it easy. We are a fragile community and we need everyone on the same team.
It is time for the annual reminder to use Brave and auto-contribute BAT.
Brave is a browser that is a drop-in replacement for Chrome. It is the same software that Chrome uses, but with a gimmick. Brave was made by Brendan Eich, who founded Mozilla and ran it when FireFox was good. Brave blocks most ads (like AdSense) and allows you to opt-in to see ads that pay you back in BAT, a cryptocurrency. You can then send BAT to websites you visit (ours). We cannot run ads, but advertisers with Brave don't select what sites they advertise on, so you bypass that.
It's also the best browser on mobile and comes with native support for some extensions plus the built-in adblocker. Even if the BAT program doesn't work for you on desktop, it will work on mobile.
We have on average 12,000 users that sign in every day. If half of those users who used the site every single day were able to use Brave rewards to send 1 BAT a month, the site would be solvent indefinitely under its current expenses. All I'm asking is people use a different browser and opt-in to ads. I run them myself so I'm not asking you to do something I wouldn't do.
I am usually very secretive about finances because people who want to shut down the site use such information against us. I'll reveal some details to make my point.
Our operational expenses are more than $1000 a month. This is just our tech contracts. $500 of that is datacenter, $200 for Cloudflare, $200 for cloud services, another $150 or so for network allocations. There's various annual license fees, domain fees, and other misc expenses on top of that.
Our legal fees have more than doubled the operational expenses. We're sitting around $25,000 in attorney's fees for 2021 (and that's with attorneys who are sympathetic and have shaved half their hours off their invoices). So, that amounts to just over $2000 a month on average. With those legal scalpers backing Greer to try and score wins for Mickey Mouse and UMG, this will probably only grow in size.
In 2019/2020 I just did merchandise runs to cover the expenses with enough extra to cover the third big category of expense: me. This site is where a lot of my time goes, but I'm trying to save for long-term plans. I want to bring the site with me into the future and I need it to pull its own weight. I'm turning 29 on the 19th and by the end of 2022 I'm going to have to very critically my relationship with the site.
I don't want to be doom and gloom but there's four issues that need to be addressed.
1. Litigation
The site has ongoing litigation and this will probably not stop. Even if Greer and Melinda dropped dead there would be more. We're a big site and if we want to remain uncensored we need to be able to pay to fend off litigious cunts.
2. Software
XenForo will no longer give us updates. We're going to need to make our own forum software, because alternatives to XF suck. We have a team of people already and we're working on getting something together. I'm putting in 8+ hours every day, sometimes from the moment I wake up to the time I go to bed, working on this new project. I hope to have something to show for it by January. I'd like to move us over as soon as we can, probably mid- to late- 2022. I would like to be able to compensate talented developers for their time because people deserve to be paid for their work.
3. DDoS Mitigation
I am still working on a long-term solution for DDoS mitigation. Nobody wants to peer with us. My phone calls and emails don't get answered. The site is basically duct taped together and I am really hoping we can actually just get real mitigation in place at some point.
4. Internal issues
Most people are fortunate enough to never notice internal drama because they read the site for the content and that's it. A lot of people participate in meta drama. I realize I'm an asshole a lot of the time, but I host the site because I like using it. If I didn't like the site or the community I wouldn't put up with it.
I'm dealing with a lot right now. My responsibilities include, but are not limited to: handling letters from suits (check warrant canaries), dealing with lawsuits, dealing with DMCAs/threats, all aspects of the merchandising efforts, our tech stack and the site's operation, and many moderation issues. I'm now trying to squeeze in enough programming to get the new software out. It's more than a full time job, and then on the site itself there are people trying to cause problems for the sake of it.
I might seek some help in managing the community and to try and keep things fun and light-hearted as they should be. The guys that run movie night want to get lolcow.tv set up again and do weekly showings of bad movies, so that sounds like a good place to start.
I'm asking people do two things:
1. Install Brave and figure out the BAT program.
2. Take it easy. We are a fragile community and we need everyone on the same team.
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