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this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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Just make a second account, the one I run, lemmy.myserv.one is so underutilized its a joke. Smaller instances like mine basically have to beg for users and the server goes unused while bigger instances struggle under the constant traffic.
Because using random tiny servers is worse in other ways. With all due respect, nobody knows you and they don't know how committed you are or how much time you have. When your server gets DDoSed or hits a bug causing data loss, what will you do? Do you have the technological know-how to recover and quickly? If your server suddenly grew and it became more expensive to run, how does anyone know if you will keep paying the bills? If Lemmy has a bad zero day, will you upgrade quickly?
There's no need to answer these questions. I'm not actually asking you personally. But these are the kinds of questions that users have to worry about from random, small, unproven instances.
(Also, Lemmy does not favour small instances because the "all" feed, searching, and going to new communities are all better the more diverse users you have.)
Yes obviously the barrier to entry is high. But nobody knows for the big servers either since they are basically just small instances that happened to get big. Thats why lemmy.fmhy.ml just died one day due to domain seizure. End of the day all you can do is look at how long a server has been around and if it has be online a reasonable amount of time. That kind of reputation just increases slowly and nobody can make it happen faster.
I didn't know about the fmhy domain being seized. That explains why I haven't seen them around! That sucks. :(
As always, I have to ask: is there a second admin, what would happen to the instance if something happened to you tomorrow (which I really wish will not!)
The Vlemmy.net disaster is still fresh in people's mind
Ultimately I am the one paying the bill currently so if I die nobody elses credit card is being charged.
In terms of other admins, this is actually happening. Some smaller instances like mine are in the process of setting up a sharing admin work between instances so that if someone is on holiday, the instance still has an admin who can login. This was only just started and is in the process. We have to create a lot of documentation and basic stuff to get it fully functional where another admin can login and fix something. Its not at that stage yet and will be a couple more weeks before it is. We did a test last night where another instance admin (boulder.ly) could connect to my instance via ssh but without documentation on what to do and check anything more than the basics of rebooting or restarting something isnt going to happen. Eventually we will get it to what to do if site has a critical vulnerability or is being attacked but not ready yet. Its a work in progress unfortunately.
P
That's still very good news! Hopefully this can take away some of the worry users might have
Do we know what happened with vlemmy?
Not really, the guy just disappeared overnight
I think without some kind of "incorporation" (or whatever the tech/FOSS equivalent of that is), most of these kinds of thing will be vulnerable to issues with the owner's payment methods failing. Even with donation options available it's almost always still being used to pay to the server owner in parallel to them paying server / domain costs out of pocket (and then reimbursing themselves with the donations)
That said, I have to assume there's some way to set up some kind of automated payment option where community donations actually fill a fund that is used to pay costs directly in case the maintainer drops off the face of the earth.
It mostly depends on the legal framework of each countries. I know in Europe a lot of FOSS non-profits are registered as such, with legal status, even sometimes tax deduction for donations.
I guess that will come in the coming months for some.
Thank you, the word "non-profit" was completely eluding my brain while writing that.
Yeah I hope a lot of the larger or more serious instances will look into that going forward, very curious to see what the landscape of all this looks like in a few months.
If Mastodon can be any indication for the future, I've seen a lot of European non-profits launch their own Mastodon instances.