Not that I am a copycat of recent threads about the “Mastodon for Harris” thing, but I’ll leave my two cents, too.
For the first time ever I saw completely random people collecting money for a presidential campaign. And yes, let’s face it - running such is costly, but we are talking about Kamala Harris, who was recommended by Democratic Party in the United States, de facto running on a bipartisan system. Neither Kamala Harris nor Democratic Party in entirety is lacking funds. In fact, they can campaign safely, and the money people have collected (300 thousand dollars) could be handed over to people who really struggle hard to meet the ends.
Sometimes I see posts begging for financial support, vastly from my mutuals. Several times I also have looked into the mutual aid tag and saw people begging for money just to survive the next month. And some people are even lacking a stable job. If I myself would get few hundred bucks right now (and yes, I struggle to find a job for over half a year for now!), that would be a lot of money for me.
And last but not least, if the only reason to start such crowdfunding was to promote Mastodon across the American administration, then I am sorry, but (a) you’re all egoistic and (b) Mastodon is not the entire Fediverse. If you want to garner support of weaker people, just fucking support the weaker. Go to the #MutualAid instead of wasting your money for something Democratic Party can fund entirely.
