It costs me exactly $4 a month to operate my server. If it grows to the point where I have to ask for donations, I will, but for now I operate it at my own expense because I can afford it.
I patreon $5 month to my server - startrek.website
That's exactly what I do. But in euros.
since it’s all federated it’s most likely donations and out of pocket. the real risk here is that as communities become more and more centralized, the cost to operate increases significantly (the lemmy.world guy had to upgrade servers at least twice during the boom). there’s a chance that these instances won’t stay around long term, i’m not sure how the lemmy code base deals with instances dropping off. does everyone lose access to all of those servers? since your account is associated with that instance do you not also lose your account and posts?
That's the problem: it does not make money.
The fediverse mean that the different instances can federate, but every instance after all still has its server and its expenses just like every web service since... always. Forums, chats, socials...
So far donations or pro bono from whoever is managing an instance, but unluckily this is not sustainable if user number skyrocket.
A way would be to somehow make everything p2p but I don't even know if it's possible for what is needed.
I wouldn't say that's a problem, far from it.
Servers are expensive, either someone pays, or the instance closes.
As of now very few people are on the fediverse, so it's cheap.
But if we expect hundreds of millions of people to use it... expenses will skyrocket.
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