Are there any paid services for either Lemmy or Mastodon? Something where, given it is a subscription service, you would expect them to stick around long-term?
Not sure how tech savvy you are, but hosting your own server costs a few euros per month, you decide how long it stays up and you are chief in command.
Second this. And other instances would still be accessible. Even more so since lemmy.world (along with probably some others) is starting censorship, which wouldn't affect you, since you decide what you can see.
I'd love to self host one for everyone but not allow communities. The idea would be that I federate with everyone no matter what and leave a what the user wants to sub to up to them. No censorship at all.
Not having communities would mean I don't have to worry about what I host and have other instances defederate with me. Plus, I have no interest in being mod, dealing with DCMA,user reports, etc.
Yeah, I may go with this option, but I really like the idea of helping create an economy. I suspect one of the Achilles heels of the Fediverse will be instances disappearing after users based their identity on a free server that the host eventually lost interest. Time will tell. I may be wrong. But also may be right.
I run my own Mastodon server and getting it filled with meaningful content is a pain. You can do it with relays and fedifetcher and other tools like that, it it's a lot easier to rely on someone else's server and the content that gets pooled there.
No need to let servers grow to mastodon.social size, but single user servers are a suboptimal way of participating in Mastodon unless you have a very strict set of accounts you wish to follow.
I wish they also had a Lemmy server. I’ve always liked Medium and have subscribed to them in the past. If they offered a lemmy servers as part of the whole package, that would be a big win for me.