Mastodawn

How is Lemmy going to make money?

https://lemmy.ml/post/1175822

How is Lemmy going to make money? - Lemmy

If the reddit exodus happens and Lemmy gets even 2% of reddit’s daily active users, how will Lemmy sustain the increased traffic? I know donations are an option, but I don’t think long term donations will be sustainable. Most users will never donate. I know the goal of Lemmy isn’t to make money, but I know that servers and storage costs add up quickly. Not to mention the development costs. I would love to hear the plans for how to offset those costs in the future?

teoria Jun 8, 2023

Did mastodon die, without funding?

buda Jun 8, 2023

Many instance have gone down due to costs being too high

GuyDudeman Jun 8, 2023

This is why I'm a communist.

Kichae Jun 8, 2023

A big issue there has also been single-user admin/mod teams. Running a site of several thousand active users is not something just one or two people can do, especially when you also have to screen remote content that's streaming in.

You can always shut down user registrations if the server's reaching the point of financial sustainability.

Austin-Philp Jun 8, 2023

This is something that needs to happen more - The whole point of the fediverse is that you don't need any high population instances. Look at the situation with lemmy.ml - they're hitting major infra issues as a result of their high user count, but they're still accepting new users (as far as I can tell). Just close the doors and post a list of reccomended other instances with similar focuses.

You can still access all the same content, regardless of your instance, or even platform

ᗪIᐯEᖇGEᑎTᕼᗩᖇᗰOᑎIᑕᔕ Jun 9, 2023

Lemmy.ml is also a stresstesting site if i understand correctly.

scrollbars Jun 10, 2023

It's this. I love the idea of running an instance and have considered it many times. But modding the thing is no joke. It's real work that needs to be taken seriously.

Riley Jun 8, 2023

There are more Mastodon instances now than ever before. Even though the active user count has been a pretty flat line for a few months now the number of new servers continues to increase week to week.

zinklog Jun 8, 2023

Is there a link where I can see the mastodon numbers? New to fediverse and interested in knowing whats happening with mastodon.

Kichae Jun 8, 2023

Check out https://fediverse.observer/stats

Fediverse Observer checks all sites in the fediverse and gives you an easy way to find a home from a map or list or automatically.

Fediverse Sites Status. Find a Fediverse server to sign up for, find one close to you!

zinklog Jun 8, 2023

thanks

Riley Jun 8, 2023

https://fediverse.observer/stats and @[email protected] If you're interested in hearing more about Fediverse stuff then @[email protected] and @[email protected] write political stuff about it fairly often.

ImOnADiet🇵🇸 (He/Him)Jun 8, 2023

The idea is to try and offload the cost into other instances, as well as doing donation drives like how wikipedia or A03 do

poVoq Jun 8, 2023

People do seem to donate sufficiently on the Fediverse. Of course the vast majority doesn't, but if one person donates 10€/month, that pays for hundreds if not thousands of users.

The entire cost structure is also different when you get a lot of volunteer labour and don't have to repay venture capital funders 3000% of their initial investment or so.

pancake Jun 8, 2023

Well, it's working right now, isn't it? If the load increases n times and donations also increase n times, it will keep working just fine.

ywein Jun 9, 2023

The majority of the current users are enthusiasts. They usually are significantly more willing to donate compared to average.

falconfetus8 Jun 9, 2023

The big migration hasn't happened yet. There's going to be a big spike in new users during the blackout, and then again when Apollo shuts down.

seirim Jun 8, 2023

I’m setting up my own instance now to contribute, and I think a lot of people might be willing to do so or similar. I pay for Internet search feature now at Kagi, and similarly I’m willing to pay for my social media (Reddit or Lemmy are the closest things to social media I use) to keep it stable and with less ads and data collection. I hope there are enough people like me that would rather pay a little than have all their data mined in nefarious ways.

Krusty Jun 8, 2023

Instances could maybe put up a Patreon with features such as voting to decide things related to the instance for example. There's plenty of ways to make money without VC.

Another idea could be making a bot that only works for people who donated, I don't know...

Maybe get funding from the European Commission or https://nlnet.nl/ or https://www.ngi.eu/ or something like that

fruitywelsh Jun 8, 2023

I've always dreamed of, and now with even more Fediverse usage it might be easier to push, to have local municipal governments fund simple sites in the states as part of a pretty standard practice of creating community spaces, and so that local governments can have a site to host accounts without the chance of being censored by big tech in the future.

rolaulten Jun 9, 2023

I empathize with this view - but I doubt this will ever happen. Ignoring the user training bits, and the legal bits (who is a mod, how do they do stuff), you need to have someone dedicated to fighting this though the IT/Security. Now keep in mind im private sector (so it's slightly different)

Link Jun 10, 2023

Maybe get funding from the European Commission or https://nlnet.nl/

They do get funding from NLNet

Lemmy - Donate

Lemmy

Krusty Jun 10, 2023

Yes! :)

activepeople Jun 8, 2023

There's also the option if user-owned cooperative (like social.coop) - https://blog.opencollective.com/social-coop-a-cooperative-decentralized-social-network/

There are also some masto instances that have their own lemmy instances, funded through their existing funding structures - https://merveilles.town/about

Social.coop: A Cooperative Decentralized Social Network

Social.coop is a cooperatively run instance of Mastodon, a decentralized social network based on open protocols and free, open-source…

Open Collective

elight Jun 8, 2023

How about "let's support kbin. Lemmy is a tire fire waiting to happen as it seems to be written by tankies."

FediTips has moved! (@[email protected])

Content warning: Please don't use Lemmy :( Human rights, oppression

Mastodon 🐘

Austin-Philp Jun 8, 2023

Currently commenting this from kbin - honestly I love it, much more flexible than Lemmy, you can still use all Lemmy content and you can access Mastadon through it!

Outsider Jun 8, 2023

One thing I'm wondering about is, how to discover kbin instances? There's a spot on the website to encourage people to create their own instances, but how do people find them? I mean if the developer is able to fund to keep his own website open then I guess it doesn't matter, but I assume if he's encouraging people to create their own instances it might be worthwhile to have people be able to find these instances.

poVoq Jun 8, 2023

Kbin has a site similar to join-lemm.org on https://kbin.pub/en

orbit Jun 8, 2023

You may have just convinced me to try it out. A few questions though: Does it have any limitations when accessing content on other Fediverse clients? Like anything goofy when looking at lemmy content for instance? Second is there an Android app available you could recommend? Third, what instances are cool to start with?

themadcodger Jun 8, 2023

I've pretty much only been using Kbin instead of Lemmy and I really haven't run into any problems. The dev just fixed the weird thing where upvotes here did nothing on Lemmy, you had to favorite it instead. But that's gone after users requested it.

There isn't a native app yet but one is in development (near the bottom). It is a newer platform compared to Lemmy (same as Calckey compared to mastodon) but personally I like the UI better. Plus the native integration to mastodon is nice. I've been using it as a PWA for the time being and haven't had any real issues, but I'm waiting for an app as well 😅

Being new, I'm on the main instance kbin.social. It's still small and there aren't many instances yet. Hopefully that will change. But nice thing about the fediverse is you can try it out and see what fits for you. Hell, you could join Friendica (FB equivalent) and access this content there if that floats your boat. So give it a try and see what you like!

Home | kbin.pub - Fediverse of content

orbit Jun 9, 2023

Alright you convinced me and I made an account. I love that it more effectively interfaces with the rest of the fediverse. Is there a better search function though? I'd love to follow some official Mastodon users like Reuters or Ars Technica but the main search doesn't let me filter for specifics.

themadcodger Jun 9, 2023

At this stage in development, things aren't quite robust yet. That said, much like email where you have to know someone's address before you can add them, it's a bit like that here.

If you search for @[email protected] it'll show up and you can follow them from kbin. Same process for communities on Lemmy.

FaceDeer Jun 9, 2023

Oh, nice. I was hoping I'd see something like this, it's an open protocol so complete alternative implementations to accomplish Reddit-like functionality is great. Nobody can rest on their laurels or assume that they get to decide what features are allowed.

mstrbtr Jun 8, 2023

Jesus this got massdownvoted by Lemmy tankies! xD Luckily there isn't the same impact on Kbin when viewing this post.

fruitywelsh Jun 8, 2023

Down voted because if the code is good, then you can fork it if the maintainers really get out of hand. I'm very opposed to the CCP personally.

mstrbtr Jun 8, 2023

From the information in the OG reply it seems pretty out of hand to me though, which makes the switch to Kbin that much easier as it's just plain better, and have full functionality to interact with microblogs. If Lemmy was the only one it would makes sense to fork it if needed, but now we have like 3 reddit-like fediverse platforms.

Kichae Jun 8, 2023

We should encourage more, frankly. Misskey has exploded in forks, and it's meant good things.

So long as they're interoperable, the diversity in experiences is good for all of us.

mstrbtr Jun 8, 2023

True!

themadcodger Jun 8, 2023

What's the 3rd platform?

mstrbtr Jun 8, 2023

It is called lotide. You can read about it here https://sr.ht/~vpzom/lotide/ , I guess there is also a 4th one called prismo, but the developer put down their project for various reasons, so i don't count it in.

lotide: Federated forum / link aggregator using ActivityPub

themadcodger Jun 8, 2023

Oh that's right. I remember seeing it at one point but immediately dismissing it because of the interface. I could see how that would apply to some, but I'm definitely more of a kbin/Calckey kind of guy.

Kierunkowy74 Jun 8, 2023

5th is Brutalinks

Kichae Jun 9, 2023

And Friendica has full groups support, AFAIK, so it functions like an inverse kbin, focusing the microblogging but giving full group access.

BackOnMyBS Jun 8, 2023

I only see 2 downvotes...omg I can see downvote counts!

mstrbtr Jun 9, 2023

Update: Now there are 16 downvotes on Lemmy, but like 1 upvote. While on Kbin 18 upvotes. xD

Kaldo Jun 8, 2023

That's been my journey so far, I first joined beehaw because I like the community but after reading more about lemmy, admins and lemmygrad it gave me a really sour taste in my mouth. Glad to have found kbin as an alternative with the same design idea, hopefully the recent popularity boost helps the development in the long term.

jackissocool Jun 9, 2023

@elight
Tankies are right
@buda

elight Jun 8, 2023

My prior comment was moderated out of the thread silently?

How is Lemmy going to make money? - lemmy - kbin.social

If the reddit exodus happens and Lemmy gets even 2% of reddit's daily active users, how will Lemmy sustain the increased traffic? I know donations are an option, but I don't think long term donations will be sustainable. Most users will never donate....

zarquon Jun 8, 2023

I still see it no problem. Does have a negative net in votes thougg

ᗪIᐯEᖇGEᑎTᕼᗩᖇᗰOᑎIᑕᔕ Jun 9, 2023

It has been downvoted to the bottom. Divisive behaviour is discouraged. I love it. :-)
kbin might still be good, though.

Bizarroland Jun 8, 2023

If you have ever browsed sites like questionablecontent.net, you may have noticed that they have a privately hosted ad server where people can reach out to Jeph and buy ads for his site.

This is a fairly rare occurrence as the requirements for the ads that he approves are pretty strict from what I understand and he's not just going to hawk the latest caffeinated Seltzer vitamin water blend to his followers.

That being said there are a lot of self hosted ad platforms that can be easily monetized and allow the site owner to dictate exactly how intrusive the ads are where the ads are coming from and to ensure that the ads effectively blend into their site design.

But a more realistic approach would be to ask users to pay an annual fee or something.

If I knew that the community was fairly strong and robust I wouldn't mind paying $10 a year or something to keep my community vibrant and strong, or rather than going with a fixed annual amount if they were to put out a donation drive the way Wikipedia does then I might be tempted to throw a little cash when I'm feeling flush.

j4yc33 Jun 8, 2023

If you think the point of anything in the fediverse if for profit, you've missed the point. It's federated, if it gets too many users to support itself, it will collapse into several smaller chunks.

The whole premise is built on the same concepts as the early web, it's interconnected, it's self-managing, and it will scale only until it can't and then it will peacefully split.

ᗪIᐯEᖇGEᑎTᕼᗩᖇᗰOᑎIᑕᔕ Jun 8, 2023

?

animist Jun 9, 2023

You should orobably read what OP wrote instead of just the title

Joe Bidet Jun 8, 2023

like the rest of the Fediverse: through ingeniosity, community and self-organization!

(understanding "make money" as "pay for its infrastructure and maybe for some dev and other of the essential work now ran by volunteers" not as "profit")

Dessalines Jun 8, 2023

When our open source grant from NLNet runs out at the end of this year, we will have to switch to full community funding, probably via yearly funding drives. Currently we only have two full-time devs, @[email protected] and I, but could potentially add more to our little worker coop as we grow.

If you'd like to help us out, here's our donation page: https://join-lemmy.org/donate

Liberapay is much preferred, but the other ones work too. I'm sincerely grateful to everyone who has or is contributed, it really does make us feel like we're working on something worthwhile.

@nutomic - Lemmy

Lemmy maintainer. Like programming in Rust. Also posting at https://fedibb.ml/view_profile?u=2 [https://fedibb.ml/view_profile?u=2]

Venus Jun 8, 2023

Liberapay is much preferred

Maybe you should make that more obvious on the page somehow? Like make Liberapay a bigger button that's separate from the rest, or just outright say in the text that it's preferred? Because as someone with no preference between them and considering supporting, I probably would have gone with Patreon out of inertia/recognition.

Dessalines Jun 9, 2023

We did have a plan to rework that entire onboarding site this month, but then this whole thing happened. I'll make sure that's in there.

ᗪIᐯEᖇGEᑎTᕼᗩᖇᗰOᑎIᑕᔕ Jun 9, 2023

You may want to be very open about how much has been donted and the costs. Else you are asking for a lot of unnecessary controversy. I can understand your motivation to work on such a project, given your openly displayed ideals, and community work ought to pay, too. But once you find the time for it, it might be beneficial to make some write-up on the philosophical points. There is a lot of combative folk around on the look-out for attack surface. I myself am old enough to understand that people develop and eventually are mature enough to see through ideology ... eventually.

Dessalines Jun 9, 2023

For sure. I think all three of those ones we list are transparent, and really the main cost is just our labor time. Server / infrastructure / devops costs are minimal.