So how long until the Fediverse is monetized?
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.
This is inevitable as well.
A user base as large as Reddit has an infra bill in the tens of millions. And that’s mature, with cost optimization at all levels to reduce compute, static content costs, more effective caching…etc
Lemmy instances are probably an order of magnitude more expensive to run on a per-user basis, at least.
This means the bill for the Lemmy fediverse if it had the active user base of reddit could be conceivably be near or over a collective $100mill/y with the majority of that just being a result of fragmented, high cost, infrastructure running a (at scale) low performance application.
But it’s sustainable if it’s non profit.
Most third party Reddit users were happy to pay in the range of $5 a month. The reason everything is shutting down now is because they don’t just want to break even, they want profit, and a shit ton at that.
The fediverse makes social media non-profit by default which means that we can all share the cost.
Wikipedia is one of the largest websites in the world and is still non-profit. It shows that it’s sustainable.
But it’s sustainable if it’s non profit.
I think this is something that’s hard to organize with our current economic system, but very much worth experimenting with.
The neat thing is we can try any concept we can dream up and federate. People can run through funding concepts and structures and failure isn’t all that bad.
Im still wrapping my head around the concept but FOR EXAMPLE could someone create an instance that requires a subscription fee, link it to their own app (like a retooled RIF) and offer a curated and managed experience?
Vs
Join a free instance, use what free software you want and have to figure out the nuts and bolts yourself?
In the root comment or the one that started this I mentioned a downside. Fast iterating paid instances can gain from larger federated instances without returning value. There needs to be a method to share bandwidth, processor time, and/or value.
The great bit is we’re all now part of this expirament!
Of course, but the important part is you have choice and instances will keep each other in check because you can always switch. With a centralized system like Reddit there’s only one provider and if you don’t use them you’re locked out of the system entirely. This gives them a monopoly on the platform and the power to do anti user bullshit.
Email is also a protocol with distributed servers and compared to that I think each fediverse instance has far less lock in. With email I can switch providers but it’s a big hassle to have to change all my accounts and tell people to use the new address and set up forwarding etc. With my Lemmy account I don’t really care that much about my user history since it’s all anonymous anyways and it’s not connected to anything that’s central to my life so if I have to switch instances it’s not a big deal. It would be nice to have some kind of account linking to show that the different instance accounts belong to the same person, and that should definitely be possible to implement, but honestly it’s not even that big of a deal to me.
ryan213
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McMillan