I’m fairly new and don’t 100% understand it yet, but instances are run on servers that require money. Are we heading towards seeing ads or subscriptions to raise funds instead of relying on donations to cover overhead?

Especially with the influx of new users. Hardware upgrades are needed.

  • SulaymanF@lemmy.world
    2·
    1 year ago

    The Fediverse SHOULD allow monetization and they don’t yet. As per Mark Bayliss:

    The problem here is that despite these large and escalating costs, a significant part of the fediverse is intrinsically hostile to anything other than charity or goodwill as a basis for running a server, due to hostility to capitalism as an abstract or just on a general point of principle regarding how web services should be funded. Any instance that runs advertisements to its users is likely to be blocked by any others purely on those grounds. Some instances have tried to introduce subscription fees for joining and have been blocked as a result. Ownership by a corporate entity or accepting funding from one is also likely to wind up with a block.

    I’m not saying to commercialize the entirety of the Fediverse but if you want it to actually compete with Twitter and Reddit and Tumblr then you need to open it up further.

    • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub
      2·
      1 year ago

      I’m not saying to commercialize the entirety of the Fediverse but if you want it to actually compete with Twitter and Reddit and Tumblr then you need to open it up further.

      I’m not sure this is what the community wants, or what we should want. The server operators should be able to get enough money to afford operation and cover some of their time investment, but I don’t think competing with businesses that obsess over large growth is a worthy goal.

    • millie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      1·
      1 year ago

      I could see a legitimate service being made out of something like an extra private lemmy, or a lemmy with additional features. Sort of like you’ll see these suites of services from Proton or Nord. Yeah, i can set up my own SMTP server, even encrypt my data, but it’s a lot easier to pay a few bucks to have a reliable service do it.

      With federated services eventually becoming mainstream, i wouldn’t be surprised to see some companies offering packages that do things like provide additional privacy or larger amounts of storage.

      Or like I’d imagine sustainable video hosts will have to monetize somehow just to pay for the storage space.