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dantondwa | 11 months ago

Ecosia is a non-profit, so being profitable is not their mission. Each month they publish a breakdown of their expenses and donations. In January they got around 4 million euros, so I’d say they are certainly successful at what they do.

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short_sells_poo|11 months ago

> Ecosia is a non-profit, so being profitable is not their mission.

So was OpenAI, but people develop amazingly flexible morals when someone throws big $$$ at them. Not saying this will happen to Ecosia, I wish them all the best, but at this point I have zero trust in promises and statements like "we'll never do X".

Again, that's not to say they are unscrupulous, they might have the best intentions of "never doing X", but such promises are extremely difficult to keep if they ever become a huge success.

InsideOutSanta|11 months ago

This blog post briefly explains their legal setup:

https://blog.ecosia.org/trees-not-profits/

They don't just have intentions, they have legal requirements. It's fine to be cynical, but if we just assume that everything is always terrible, there is no incentive to not be terrible.

azeirah|11 months ago

Are there differences between what non-profits are allowed to do in Germany vs the US?

I'm assuming that German has stricter rules, but I wouldn't know.