Oh good gods I hope not. That kind of popularity is what killed Reddit.

Getting hugely popular --> Higher server costs --> Increased temptation towards profit-seeking

Sure, the whole of Lemmy wouldn’t privatize (at least at first), but what would likely happen is just as what has happened over the last 20 years with email: a few instances gets most of the traffic over the course of a decade or two, meaning small, independent instances won’t be able to compete.

Sure, their hosting ability (“users/dollar”, if you will) would plateau, but as more and more people join the big instances (think lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, and so forth), the percentage of the Fediverse going to small, independent instances would increasingly get smaller, until we end up a corporatized federated Web to match our corporatized unitary Web.

Except unlike with Reddit, we can still have the small independent instances. And there will probably be more users on them in the future than there are Lemmy users today.

Sure, just as we have small independent email instances. But by and large the vast supermajority belong to a few large players.

I have no doubt the same will happen to the Fediverse.

Capitalism ruins everything in the end.

A few large players and the ability to choose smaller instances, and have them speak to each other, is still a huge upgrade over one player (Reddit) who doesn’t let other social media federate with it.

Not as good as the ideal fediverse, but a step in the right direction.