Asklemmy

I'm running a barebones server for myself and a few communities (not many subs yet) which will run for less than a Starbucks coffee a month... (Assuming I don't need more storage space... Lemmy seems pretty light. The main servers are gonna carry the load unfortunately... Beehaw.org had a transparency post about financials as of about a week ago they said something that their instance was costing like 50-75ish a month of I recall.

Lemmy is never going to handle an entire migration of reddit's whole user base. Most redditors use the official app, and the mainstream audience for the platform now represents the largest user group. They're not going to wholesale make the jump to Lemmy. That wouldn't even be possible without widespread coordination of resources. Each instance can only handle so many users, so new instances will have to continually be created to accommodate influx. Theres no profit incentive either, meaning whoever is running the instance server is purely doing it out of their passion for the platform. That doesn't scale linearly, there's only so many people out there with the resources to run a large instance.

Measuring the cost isn't possible. It depends on electricity and equipment costs which vary a lot. And the question doesn't make sense either.

I would like to join a cooperatively owned instance.

I have been tempted to join cosocial.ca, however I don't care for microblogging (Mastodon) as much as something forum-like such as a Lemmy instance.

I suspect reddit's reported uprofitablity isn't due to the cost of hosting, but from blowing money in other ways.

Each instance funds itself. Some might try ads, but as of now, most are just funded by donations.

Personally I plan on donating the price of Reddit Premium to my instance owner

The thing is, Lemmy is decentralized. You don't need to have an account on an instance (server) to use that instance's "subreddits" (communities) - instances communicate their activity to each other automatically, so any instance will do (provided the instances haven't banned each other). It's just like email.

So it's pretty simple to just stop accepting sign-ups once an instance starts to become impractically large. Anyone can start an instance for just the cost of a domain ($10ish/year, or free if it's a subdomain of an existing website) and a server (that random computer you already have lying around will do just fine, for free). And a small instance can do fine on just donations and the good will of the operator.

donations to my favorite instances, like wikipedia i hope :)

Since it's distributed, the cost doesn't even compare to a centralized instance. It's really hard to say how much it would cost to host everyone across the fediverse, but because of decentralization, it'll be a hell of a lot easier to achieve.

I know that it is not a popular topic in 2023 but a blockchain currency that allows users to 'award' posts/comments (similar to tipping in /r/dogecoin days) could provide instance owners with a source of income by taking a small portion of tips on their server.

Such a system would likely scale alongside user activity (read server load) and would encourage higher quality content. Would love to hear peoples thoughts on this.

I bought a server for about 100 a year... With my whopping 2 users... It's overkill... So... My comment is a wasted way of saying idunno

Really, the only direct cost of lemmy is the development. That's the beauty of lemmy's decentralized nature, the cost of actually running it is spread out among tech hobbyists with spare hardware and time (edit: and only ~$30/year or less for a domain name), or may even have some money to throw at new hardware. For most people, the connectivity doesn't incur any additional cost to whatever they're already paying for internet access.

There are plenty of free and excellent open source projects that neither charge money or generate profits, they're driven by passionate developers who give their and talent for the enjoyment of it and betterment of the community.___

It's literally all donated