I prefer non-corporate alternatives, like lemmy or mastodon. However, if it’s going to last, users are going to have to contribute what they can to keeping the lights on, otherwise, if lemmy grows, they’ll have to resort to things like ads to cover their costs and it will become reddit all over again.
Honestly I’m fine with some amount of ads as long as they are unobtrusive and inoffensive. Either that or there’s a free tier with some minimal ads and a paid tier with no ads. Nothing outlandish though.
Unfortunately with the current structure of things, that’s probably what will have to happen for a bit.
Lemmy is decentralized and federated and there are pros and cons to that system. One of those is that users expect a completely free experience. However, I have a server at home, but I have no way of scaling it. So despite there being a community I’d love to spin up, I can’t because I have no way of scaling it.
Most people are going to have to go through Cloud providers for that, which can get pricey.
At least with Lemmy there’s lots of different servers, each with their own running costs.
Each could try a different way of keeping the lights on. Some could run on donations only, some could use small unobtrusive ads on the side, some could do lots of ads. If any server does too little they’ll go down due to lack of funding, if any server does too much the users will migrate elsewhere, as it’s quite easy to make a new account on another instance and keep following the same communities.
Even if we end up with some large-scale instances with big servers, millions of users and serious money involved, they won’t have a monopoly on all the content like with reddit, so the competition should keep them from doing anything stupid.
I prefer non-corporate alternatives, like lemmy or mastodon. However, if it’s going to last, users are going to have to contribute what they can to keeping the lights on, otherwise, if lemmy grows, they’ll have to resort to things like ads to cover their costs and it will become reddit all over again.
Honestly I’m fine with some amount of ads as long as they are unobtrusive and inoffensive. Either that or there’s a free tier with some minimal ads and a paid tier with no ads. Nothing outlandish though.
No instance admin should have to bear the cost.
Unfortunately with the current structure of things, that’s probably what will have to happen for a bit.
Lemmy is decentralized and federated and there are pros and cons to that system. One of those is that users expect a completely free experience. However, I have a server at home, but I have no way of scaling it. So despite there being a community I’d love to spin up, I can’t because I have no way of scaling it.
Most people are going to have to go through Cloud providers for that, which can get pricey.
Just like people share the cost for a Netflix account they could probably share the cost of their fediverse access. IF people really wanted that is.
At least with Lemmy there’s lots of different servers, each with their own running costs.
Each could try a different way of keeping the lights on. Some could run on donations only, some could use small unobtrusive ads on the side, some could do lots of ads. If any server does too little they’ll go down due to lack of funding, if any server does too much the users will migrate elsewhere, as it’s quite easy to make a new account on another instance and keep following the same communities.
Even if we end up with some large-scale instances with big servers, millions of users and serious money involved, they won’t have a monopoly on all the content like with reddit, so the competition should keep them from doing anything stupid.