Historically speaking, the act of financially supporting creatives on the Fediverse has always been something of a pain point. The network lacks a meaningful payment layer, and most of the network’s infrastructure relies on donations made through Patreon, LiberaPay, OpenCollective, KoFi, and GoFundMe. Having to sign up to yet another platform to support someone’s work can introduce a lot of unnecessary friction, and actively hinder fundraising efforts.

There has been no shortage of interesting ideas to solve this, such as Retribute or methods for implementing Web Monetization in Fediverse platforms, but most efforts have not advanced beyond the planning stages. A new Fediverse startup named sub.club believes it has the answer.

“The promise of the internet, and the state of the web, has been under stress for years now, and with generative AI, the open web is truly at risk of extinction. ActivityPub and the Fediverse offer our best, and maybe last, chance to preserve the internet that “we all came here for.” We believe that adding easy payment solutions (for creators, publishers, entrepreneurs, Mastodon instance owners…) is a critical part of unlocking the full potential of the Fediverse.”

Bart Decrem, founder of sub.club and Mammoth

What the heck is sub.club?

The overall idea behind sub.club is simple: people can pay a set amount of recurring donations, and gain access to posts from a private ActivityPub account for exclusive content. Creators using sub.club post private DM’s to their sub.club actor, and these messages get relayed into the private feed. Creators display their sub.club account handles in their profile fields, and apps such as Mammoth and Ice Cubes can read that value, and display a special subscription button.

What’s nice about sub.club is that supporters can use their existing Fediverse accounts to follow a sub.club creator. After setting up a recurring payment, users are directed to follow that creator’s special private account, and the follow happens seamlessly. You don’t have to juggle multiple accounts, or log in to a sandbox to read exclusive updates. It just works.

Quick Demo

Our friend Anuj Ahooja, who sometimes writes for We Distribute, incidentally works on sub.club. He made a short video demonstrating how the system works in action. It looks really smooth and easy to use!

Are we ready for monetization?

As publishing, commerce, and subscription services begin to take off in the Fediverse, an open question regards how the nature of the network might change. Understandably, there’s some pushback on the network against centralization and the idea of “going corporate”.

As a space, there is always a lot of talk about technology and platforms, and what they can do for the people here. That’s cool but we can tend to forget the driving force is people and communities. People grow community and communities benefit from tech. Please spare a thought for those that depend on organic and discrete direct material support that is not tied to metrics or reach to survive and thrive.

The value of community and durable interactive organic connections are sometimes lost in the context of having greater reach. It can be all too common to abandon durable relationships in a small group in favor of influencing a larger crowd.

Radio Free Fedi, State of the Station Report – July 23rd, 2024

The heart of the matter is simple: the network is changing, and some long-time members of the community are apprehensive about how material changes of their gathering place might also change its communal, supportive spirit.

Personally, I’m feeling optimistic about sub.club. It’s an opportunity for a lot of different parts of the network to directly receive support: instances, platforms, apps, music, and video creators are all looking at ways to support themselves on this network. Having an easy way to do that could remove a lot of friction that we all currently have to deal with.