Long term, I see business opportunities for ad supported or paid instances with enterprise level management (reliability, maintenance, scaling, backup). The important factor is that they can’t lock you in - if you decide you don’t like the policies at your current instance, go find a new one.
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
62 points (90.8% liked)
No Stupid Questions
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No such thing. Ask away!
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it is more sustainable to pay for your small chunk of a network than to pay for a monolith that encompasses everything
i hope lemmy.world doesnt become too big for its own good and becomes to big to upkeep
If it becomes too big for them, then can always shut down sign ups and direct people to other instances.
Another important factor to note is it takes a fraction of hosting power to host lemmy vs something like reddit, because reddit does an insane amount of power hungry tracking in the background. Lemmy (and apps like jebora) don't collect anything, so don't need to constantly stream all that data to the main server instance
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At this point, even Reddit is not profitable.
Lemmy is a non-profit that receives grant funding through NLnet's NGI0 Discovery Fund. And also - individual giving.
Individual instances can fund themselves how they want. Besides donations - there’s certainly a world where some servers start hosting sponsored content to keep afloat. Given that users have so many alternatives, there’s a limit in how much they could get away with.
There’s also a world in which small government would run and operate instances if this gets popular enough. No reason why somewhere like Estonia can’t do so as a promotion of their booming tech industry.
personally I think governments need to get more invested in hosting various forms of social media. People need platforms where they can openly discuss community issues where their representatives are obligated to respond. And this place needs to be free and open for everyone (i.e. not twitter)
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I run my own instance just because I want to build a community that people can enjoy. I do it out of my own pocket and don't ask for donations of any kind. Not everything is about profit for some people. If I were running a site as big as Lemmy.world, then I would consider it, but only to cover some expenses.
This. We need to stop seeing such online gatherings as opportunities to be profitable. I personally view them as social interactions and opportunities to exchange random and interesting information. Water cooler talks or forums (the ancient greek/roman sort - I wonder how many shitposts those had).
When you invite people over to your house for a gathering (also incurring costs - even if people bring something to cover the catering bit, you still have to clean up afterwards) you wouldn't consider it as an opportunity to profit right? (Or you are and are just hosting an MLM party or have some sort of agenda to push).
Plot twist: not everything needs to be profitable.
Waaah!? Profits are the key to life itself! Blasphemy!
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I don't know the answer.
Neither do I. I just wrote this just so lemmy counts me as an active user
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The idea is to remove profit motive, and distribute the actual costs to the users or admins.
Same way as any enthusiast could have run their own BBS back in the day. The perk now is they're linked together.
I would be shocked if it stays like that forever everywhere, but since the early days there's generally been some way to eat the cost.
As other people's said, profit is/should not be the driving force. However you should chip in every now and then towards the instance of your choosing. I have donated to lemmy.world and will do it again.
I see it as normal for the instance owners to have their costs completely covered and some extra on top for them for all the time spent.
They aren't, and due to the type of culture that is common here many users are outright hostile to any monetization other than charity. mastodon has had instances being defederated for the crime of attempting to introduce advertising or subscription.
It remains to be seen if this changes, but for now you're unlikely to start a fediverse instance for profit.
Personally, I like the way the haiku project does it. They have a bar with how much they need on the website and as they get more donations, the bar starts filling up. I think the most important thing is to be transparent about your costs.
That’s exactly what Reddit used to do.