At time of publication, the campaign had raised 485k on ActBlue. Yesterday it broke 500k and is still going strong, with smaller daily fundraising goals.
You can see the progress tracker here: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/mastodon-for-harris
Shit, wish I saw this thread before I donated $100
That’s actually pretty awesome.
One stated purpose of the campaign is to show the size and influence of the fediverse so that politicians and governments will set up instances and/or accounts and maintain an official presence on it. $500k may or may not be enough to do that, but the organizer is meeting with Democratic Party officials this week to discuss the campaign and there could be meaningful outcomes for the whole fediverse.
Paying for a politician to pay attention to you must be the most American thing I have ever seen. They should use fedivers because it is correct, if they don’t, they don’t deserve my money (I’m not from there so I personally wasn’t going to donate anything either)
They might not know about the fediverse in the first place
I can believe that she doesn’t know anything about fediverse, I can believe that her team doesn’t know anything about fediverse as a whole, but that neither she nor her team knows anything about Mastodon, no, I don’t believe that.
I kinda agree that its weird, but its not really a strictly american thing at all. Its just how our world kinda works sadly.
I don’t know the whole of Europe, but I do know that in general the financing of politicians works very differently and it is not normal to donate money to a politician in the same way as there.
I mean these donations dont go to kamala harris as a person either. They go to her campaign which then decides how to use them. I dont know what the restrictions are for how that money can be used but i would think that there are some.
Serious question - what is the best way to participate in one of these without resigning yourself to spam texts and emails and junk mail for the rest of time?
Just use a throwaway email/Google Voice or something?
Even then you have to use your home address to verify payment, right? Or no?
It’s time for democratic states to start hosting Mastodon instances to communicate with the citizens to bypass the unreliable middle men such as Zuckerberg or Musk.
