Oh boy, this has been fun… I never said I had banned my kids from all SM for all time. I was just pointing out the opportunity for a fediverse project.

Some of you are clearly not parents. You can be on the permissive side of parenting style but that doesn’t mean you open the entire internet wide open when they hit 13.

She laughed through the entire powerpoint presentation. She thought it was a funny way to bring it up. We never said “no.” We told her she had valid points and lets keep discussing. She just turned 15 and this is the first time she asked for access.

And if anyone is wondering, we Ok’d IG because friend group was there too and moving off of Snap because of the number of creeps.

I’m definitely banning them from Lemmy though, lol

It’s interesting the number of comments about parenting advice as opposed to technology suggestion.

For some clarifying points: my kids are allowed on some social media, BeReal, Youtube, Pinterest. They log into our accounts for FB Marketplace.

There is a growing acknowledgement amongst kids that smartphones and social media create mental health issues. All of my kids have asked us to limit their screen time.

I’m not an overly restrictive parent but I tend to ease my kids into things as opposed to one day it’s banned, one day it’s permitted. Collectively, parental controls suck on most technology platforms and at the end of the day, the corporate SM is still trying to addict you and turn you into the product.

I think what my dream is is for a simple set up of a family server with roles. So you can start with just sharing pictures with grandma and grandpa and then expand into sharing more broadly. But starting the online experience outside off of the corporate algorithms.

Good. This place was such a rip off.

Less popular opinion. If we drive taxes up on the rich they’ll just get more creative with tax avoidance or move to Panama.

The ultra wealthy don’t pay income taxes and they didn’t in 1950 either. They’re mostly paying capital gains which was lower back then then it is now.

What we really need to do is remove all the massive loopholes in the current tax code and maybe do something like having progressive tax brackets on capital gains (some people are legitimately just using capital gains as retirement income).

Also, fund the IRS more. They’re not the evil tax man. They are finding the people who aren’t paying their legal fair share.

I went hog hunting a few times back in my redneck days. There’s virtually no regulations and we had no idea what to do. Me and my friends went out with a full arsenal. I had a 9mm, SKS, and a 30-06.

I used every gun. It was crazy.

I make specialty vehicle electronics. My immediate thought was very small and cheap sensors. Similar to tire pressure monitoring but wired with CAN or something similar.

https://www.ti.com/lit/ug/slau908b/slau908b.pdf?ts=1742093653289&ref_url=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.ti.com%252Ftool%252FLP-MSPM0C1104%253Fhqs%253Depd-msp-procbr-mspm0_small-pr-evm-ew5-wwe

Washing dishes is the first thing that comes to mind. Foot rubs is another. I’m sure ill think of others

There are other things of I can do with my own hands but is somehow better when done by my spouse.

As soon as you think you know all the fediverse services out there…

Yeah. I’ve done WP before just wanted to try something new. Sounds like your setup isn’t too bad though.

Well I’m at least 20 years from retirement. so I’ve got time. I’m looking into several options including coop and ESOP. First 5 years of business was living off savings and raiding retirement funds instead of getting investors. At present I’m aiming for selfish goals of repaying myself and saving for my kids.

There are tech companies who don’t want to sell. I started my tech company 9 years ago and we did almost $5M last year. My plan is to do this for next 20 years and then sell to my employees. Sure there’s a number big enough that I’d sell my company but so far any acquisition offers have been met with snark and disrespect (from me) and died pretty quick. I talk to other tech owners in similar boats. We just don’t need to tell everyone because we aren’t trying to get acquired. One vocal exception is 37 Signals.

For me it sunk in that we really need both. Insurance against the inability to work due to just getting old and retirement to allow for enjoyment and experience a life beyond the grind.

Seems reasonable.

Yes I think so. If they had an ad free versions I’d pay for it.

What are they looking at doing for revenue?

Yeah but Valve is centralized ownership still. One guy has majority and that makes a difference. A coop could be customer led from get go. 51% customers 49% employees or something like that.

The point being if you structure it as for profit you can charge for things and build a good product. You can make rules that says 100% of the profits have to be redistributed and no one can change that. It’s how many farm co-ops work.

You could do a for profit without investors. Any profit goes back to employees and paying users. Make it the operating agreement from the get go and no one could come in.

Non profit in many places means you can’t sell a service. So you rely on donations. Which means you’re constantly asking for donations.

That’s hard. I like an algorithm I can control. Maybe could do ads in search only. I don’t know. Kind of hate ads.

Think beyond VC backed companies. Those get tons of attention because they need it.

Investors = bad. I whole heartedly agree.

For profit doesn’t have to be bad. What if it were a worker/user co-op. Have a free product and have a paid product. If you pay for the product you get a (just one) vote. If you work for the company you get a vote. Users won’t vote for maximizing profit. But the profit means you don’t have to beg for donations.

Craigslist would be another example. For profit but no major investors so doesn’t have to prioritize profits.