Greetings! I joined the Fediverse near the beginning of this year. Mastodon was the first platform I joined. Since then, I have been enjoying my experience, and recently, I joined Lemmy and found myself using that site almost as much as I did with Reddit (before the mass exodus).
However, there are a few things I'm curious about, and I would like feedback from this community. Greatly appreciate your responses!
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What is the monetary cost associated with an individual hosting an instance? Can these costs be covered sufficiently through donations, or do the individuals have to look for other sources of funding?
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Has anyone thought about how we can bring more people over to the Fediverse? My friends and family are all still on the Big Tech platforms like FB and Insta, and I doubt I will be able to convince them to switch over to a Fediverse platform, especially if they themselves don't see any of their connections using the platform too. How does the Fediverse community plan on attracting more users over?
Right now everything is funded through donations though it's not clear how feasible that is in the long term. I wouldn't be surprised if some instances run ads in the future.
Maturation. It's just that most Fediverse sites outside of Mastodon aren't ready for prime time. Lemmy just recently started getting great apps and stabilization updates. Other projects like Kbin aren't there yet. I think it'll take time before the Fediverse has an easy onboarding process.
If we do have some instances running ads, wouldn't that run counter to the goals of the Fediverse? It's my understanding that much of the migration from Big Tech platforms to Fediverse platforms is to escape the intrusive nature of ads and to prevent the Big Tech companies from taking user data and giving it to advertisers, something that is a major privacy concern these days.
Not really. You can always switch to another instance, and there's a big difference between running few ads to stay afloat and being a for-profit company like other social media. The Fediverse would still be by the community, for the community even if some instances run ads.