I’m not sure there’s a good Community to discuss meta elements of Lemmy? So I’m posting here, this isn’t necessarily a support question (and might be apt in a Lemmy developers community or asked on matrix) but I also think it’d be valuable to get input from a larger pool of Lemmy users.
Last night I stumbled on a dead instance that have links somehow through the fediverse still being able to read the body text but with dead images link and whatnot due to being served from a now defunct instance. And that inspired me to make this post, curious what admins are supposed to do to try and make Lemmy more sustainable to host/incentivize instances to stay up (even if their admin is kind of a jerk or whatever).The admin of this instance said a couple years ago he was shutting down the domain and was really angry to be hosting a Lemmy instance with like 250k visitors or whatever his metric was. He had a donate button but was not making enough to recoup the hosting costs and basically made inflamed comments about the users giving him a pittance of $60/month.
I’ve tried to host my own Lemmy instance and did for about a year but I had specific goals in mind to make a local community to get local businesses off the other US social platforms. I didn’t find much time or effort making this a reality, just me and few friends had accounts on the instance so I pulled the plug.
But it made me curious if Lemmy devs or community have some sense of what would be a good way to help admins fund their hosting costs? I’d be against ads/trackers, promoted content as they erode privacy and the spirit of the fediverse imo. But what would the community’s thoughts on having some sort of payment system baked in where it’s kind of gimmicky but translates to $ for server costs?
I personally don’t pay for “free” things, which is coincidentally how most people operate; But smaller, humanity defining initiatives like the fediverse subverting US tech oligarchy might be a decent cause to toss a few dollars at every month via some sort of subscription with some value add. Like Reddit has awards you can give other users, maybe something like that? I’d love to hear what others think!
It’s a great idea, but I believe the majority of users will not opt in or donate less than the value they derive from the service.
Radiohead in the late naughts released an album as “pay what you want” on their site and only 60% paid anything with the average price being paid of only $2.26. An album has always been closer to $20 in my mind so they took a risk and got pennies on the dollar. It was still profitable and they have adoring fans that would likely support them regardless so it’s probably why it’s so “high” compared to other things like applications.
Just food for thought. Personally, if I were to donate to Lemmy id be more inclined to donate to the devs than the admins, we only have finite dollars to spend after all. But I think the admins shouldn’t be left holding the hosting costs without some means to break-even. Maybe Lemmy devs could like profit-share with larger instances? But the charity system is all predicated on people opening their wallets/hearts to the cause. Tangible benefits is an easier sell to most users, and very popular revenue stream.
Radiohead album info: https://songremains.substack.com/p/pay-what-you-want-how-radiohead-proved
You’re comparing a for-profit endeavor with something that isn’t meant to be profit driven. Apart from that, what “profit” do the Lemmy devs make? They aren’t making anywhere near market rate for the skill set they provide.