How are we going to pay for all this?

I bought a server for about 100 a year... With my whopping 2 users... It's overkill... So... My comment is a wasted way of saying idunno

I think Lemmy, like Mastodon, will crumble if people don't wrap their heads around federation. Mastodon stuggled because everyone just joined mastodon.social, not understanding that the server you join only affects your local timeline.
We need to teach people that you can join a small instance and still get 99% of the stuff you want from every other instance
- Speaking as someone who totally doesn't understand federation (but totally does get servers being overloaded) - I can completely see why they all joined what appears to be the primary instance. I did. I really struggled to work out which server to join and had to wade through a few that had their own special rules (eg "no creating communities here" - idr which one that was tho).
  I ended up joining lemm.ee simply because it seems like a nice generic server set up to do general stuff with that wasn't lemmy.ml. Is that a good choice? idk.
  I had a similar problem grasping mastodon (actually the reason I didn't really use it in the end).
  Lemmy servers need to work more like Counterstrike or TF2 or WoW servers (edit: or IRC servers - that's probably a better comparison tbh), where you might want to join a specific server with its own personality, but most people probably don't care and are more interested in whether it performs well and is likely to be around a while. I also think some simple things like making the server less prominent in the UI and not making local communities the default view would help loads with people not feeling like they're less because they're not on the primary instance.
  Edit: LMAO except I didn't. I posted using the account I'd made on lemmy.ml but decided not to use. Lemmying is hard, yo.

As paradoxical as it is, I think that these open source non-profit projects are a lot more efficient than profit-driven, debt-fueled corporations.
First of all, the main contributors to a FOSS project do it for passion and do not take a salary.
Secondly, they don't have the infinite growth mindset that pushes enterpreneurs to to spend as much as possible for maximum growth, all financed by a growing amount of investors (and debt, which costs interest fees).
If a FOSS project reaches maximum capacity, they will close subscriptions, they will throttle traffic, i.e. they will slow down growth, but they will not go into debt. Slowing down growth is something that a for-profit company would never do (at least until the interest rates were low and the investors were plenty, today idk). Eventually someone else in the community will decide to do a generous donation or open their own instance.

sell checkmarks like Tumbler.
for x$ a month get a checkmark next to your name on posts. in whatever colours you pay for. buy checkmarks for others.
- What would the checkmark mean?

I know that it is not a popular topic in 2023 but a blockchain currency that allows users to 'award' posts/comments (similar to tipping in /r/dogecoin days) could provide instance owners with a source of income by taking a small portion of tips on their server.
Such a system would likely scale alongside user activity (read server load) and would encourage higher quality content. Would love to hear peoples thoughts on this.
- Honestly I would hate that, but if that's what keeps the lights on then I'll deal with it. I would prefer to move to an anonymous donation model like Wikipedia but I'm skeptical that will work.

Put up a yearly donation drive (like Wikipedia) but unlike Wikipedia do:
a competition between the various instances, on which collects the most donations
not shift the page content when displaying the donation banner!
Ideally the donations will be handled through a non-profit org dedicated to this particular purpose. If the donation level is high enough, developers can be hired to further improve the source code. Currently the funds are managed through OpenCollective, but with enough growth this may not be feasible any longer.
This will most likely lead to heated debates as this will build a somewhat centralized organization, which necessarily comes with power concentration.
- a competition between the various instances, on which collects the most donations
  Can you elaborate? I have the impression, that we need to think more deeply about how the donations should be distributed. E.g. a users fund are donated proportional to their subscribed Communities? I think it's difficult, as people's time spent on a community doesn't necessarily mean it's proportionally valuable. I've had a few subreddits which I used rarely but we're quite important to me.
  
  Each instance is free to field their own donation drives for their running cost. They even can display advertisements if they feel like it. There is no "one size fits all" here, and there shouldn't.
  Each instance is potentially in a different jurisdiction, making it hard to transfer money, etc.
  Not only that, but I think having funds centrally collected and then distributed is a particularly bad idea. It comes with too much opportunities for bad blood. Money and friendship don't mix.
  The only unifying constant of the network is the software that runs it. This though needs to be improved in various areas, for which centrally collected funds would be ideal, as every instance will benefit from it. No operator of any instance would have a disadvantage from advertising the central donation drive. They would benefit from it by having better software in the end.

Wikipedia is the 7th most visited website in the world, more popular than Amazon, TikTok, even PornHub. It's not funded by advertisers or other bullshit - rather through reader donations.
With that said, Wikipedia is still centralized content whereas Lemmy isn't. Meaning there's fewer expenses and pressure on any one instance or server to succeed. And if one instance or server doesn't succeed, your access to the Federation is far from over.
- What happens to your account on a federated server if that one fails though?
- Wikipedia is set up as a nonprofit. They have annual fundraising drives asking their users for money. They also have an endowment and receive grants.
  A donation drive could be a good model but the decentralized nature of the platform would complicate things.
  
  Wikipedia is set up as a nonprofit. They have annual fundraising drives asking their users for money. They also have an endowment and receive grants.
  when you donate money, you're not funding wikipedia's operating costs. wikipedia itself is self sufficient. what you're funding instead is the wikimedia foundation- which is set up to not receive grants but to give them.
  the drives are misleading, to say the least

The thing is, Lemmy is decentralized. You don't need to have an account on an instance (server) to use that instance's "subreddits" (communities) - instances communicate their activity to each other automatically, so any instance will do (provided the instances haven't banned each other). It's just like email.
So it's pretty simple to just stop accepting sign-ups once an instance starts to become impractically large. Anyone can start an instance for just the cost of a domain ($10ish/year, or free if it's a subdomain of an existing website) and a server (that random computer you already have lying around will do just fine, for free). And a small instance can do fine on just donations and the good will of the operator.
- Apropos of nothing, where are you finding domains for $10/year?
  
  Check tld-list.com for price comparisons of different domain providers.

A small cloud server + a domain name costs less than a Netflix subscription. The developers have taken care to package lemmy in ways that are relatively straight forward to deploy, so a dedicated person with a small amount of experience can have an instance up and running in an evening. As long as a few percentage of users are willing to pay a netflix subscription to keep a server running, the financial burden would be spread.
- I think this underestimates how users will naturally gravitate towards more centralized instances, or they'll give up because the bigger instances are closed. Someone's gotta pay for it, and it's going to cost more than a Netflix subscription. Servers aren't cheap.
  This also ignores that the system isn't horizontally scalable at all, so scaling up gets even more expensive
  
  I think this underestimates how users will naturally gravitate towards more centralized instances, or they’ll give up because the bigger instances are closed.
  (This is purely my personal opinion, of course!) In the scenario in which a few large instances dominate, the idea of the fediverse failed. One may estimate the likelyhood of success or failure given how they expect humans to behave, but in the end experiment beats theory. I think that for the fediverse to work a significant cultural shift has to occur, but I don't think that it is an impossible shift. I would like the fediverse to succeed, and so I choose to take part in the experiment.
  This also ignores that the system isn’t horizontally scalable at all, so scaling up gets even more expensive
  Yes, that might cause some serious issues. The project is still in an early-development phase, and I don't understand the technical aspects well enough yet to be able to identify whether there is obviously a fundamentally invincible barrier when it comes to scalability. My optimistic hope is that the developers are able to optimize horizontal scalability fast enough to meet the demand for scale. If it turns out to be impossible to scale, then only rich enough parties would be able to have viable instances, and that could be a reason for failure.

Personally I plan on donating the price of Reddit Premium to my instance owner
- Whenever he figures out donations that is :))
  I don't know what kinda person happens to have a massive server cluster sitting around waiting to go, but @TheDude is the dude, and the dude abides.

You bring up a very good point. Currently lemmy.ml has thousands of users. Lemmy.world has thousands of users. The hardware they have selected to run their instances is adequate for now, but, what is the plan for scaling out if the user base grows? Is there one? They have a donation page on each lemmy instance (click or tap the heart icon,) but that can’t be enough to pay for the cost of running something used by millions of people, even if only 100s of thousands are ever only online at any given time.
In terms of UI/UX, @dessalines@lemmy.ml has mentioned in a post they are currently working on major performance improvements and enhancements.
- Ideally, I think no one instance should have a million users to begin with.
  
  Ideally, yes. If that can be the reality, and I suppose that is how it should would with federation, then server costs should never get out of hand.

Reddit has over 2,000 employees most of whom are doing bullshit nobody using the site actually needs or wants, it's possible to run a lot leaner than that. Like Reddit itself used to, before they started burning hundreds of millions trying to compete with every other social media site at once instead of being Reddit
- bullshit nobody using the site actually needs or wants
  Like being CEO.

edit: misposted comment - see bizarre explanation below (and it's not just me)
westworld - lovely visuals
alias - excellent theme music
bojack horseman
- What lol