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this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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Fediverse
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I think there is a huge misconception many people have that a larger instance is more likely to stay around, but due to the nonlinear costs involved in hosting fediverse instances this is not true.
Basically there is a sweet-spot around a few thousand (~2500) members where costs are low enough for a single admin paying things out of their own pocket long term is possible, but also enough members willing to occasionally donate or contribute otherwise to cover costs.
To be honest, I know it's a controversial view, but I would almost like to see Ruud and the LW admins block registrations for a while, along with a communication "Have a look at those other instances, they are well managed, you can access all of Lemmy just as well from there"
I'm not looking forward to 5 years from now, where instances like this are the mastodon.social of federated reddit-likes. As much as they should block registrations, I don't think they will. ...but I have a hat on stand by, just in case I need to eat it.
I think they're stuck in a vicious circle, their server costs scale with size but new users are way more likely to donate. Users that have already donated feel like they've done their bit for a while, and that's if they're still around and engaged in a few weeks. Very few people want to donate monthly, subscription style.
My personal controversial view is people should put more faith in well-run self-hosted instances. It's a much more sustainable way to run a Fediverse server and self-hosted doesn't have to mean amateur hour. Just because an instance is cloud hosted doesn't mean it's well configured or secure either.
I have way more resources at my disposal than the vast majority of cloud hosted instances, for a tiny fraction of the cost. lemm.ee for example is very well run but has to put up with a 100kb image size limit because of cost-driven space constrains.
Self hosting is also closer to the spirit of what decentralization is supposed to mean - your server ultimately belongs to your host.
Interesting, I wasn't really thinking about this, I guess most of admins nowadays just prefer the convenience (including scalability) of a VPS.
I mean, with 27k monthly active users, they are more prevalent that Mastodon.social. The following instances are so much smaller it's almost comical.
@remindme@mstdn.social 5y
If anyone's looking, my instance is open for everyone and I plan on supporting it long-term. https://lemmings.world