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The idea is to remove profit motive, and distribute the actual costs to the users or admins.
Same way as any enthusiast could have run their own BBS back in the day. The perk now is they're linked together.
I would be shocked if it stays like that forever everywhere, but since the early days there's generally been some way to eat the cost.
I mean, Wikipedia does it and they're the 7th most visited website on the internet. 🤷
I would like to see the host push ads, so that it's sustainable. It doesn't have anything negative to the community except it will sustain the instance do does the Fediverse.
Ive seen some things (totally unrelated mobile apps) make ads optional. I think its a good idea if youre iffy about having them but do need them to keep the site up, im sure people would be happy to enable ads to support these types of sites. Plus cant be any worse than the shite youtube has for ads
I'm considering a free version on the app stores with limited ads(subtle and no tracking), a paid version without them, and one with optional donations on alternative stores.
I don't like ads and I don't want to shove them down unwilling throats, but most people don't care (and frankly I need the money)
Among the ones that do, there's those that hate seeing them, and ones with privacy concerns. If I make them subtle and offer an upgrade to remove them, I hope that'll satisfy one group, and the other one can get a build where the ad libraries were never installed in the first place
I run my own instance just because I want to build a community that people can enjoy. I do it out of my own pocket and don't ask for donations of any kind. Not everything is about profit for some people. If I were running a site as big as Lemmy.world, then I would consider it, but only to cover some expenses.
This. We need to stop seeing such online gatherings as opportunities to be profitable. I personally view them as social interactions and opportunities to exchange random and interesting information. Water cooler talks or forums (the ancient greek/roman sort - I wonder how many shitposts those had).
When you invite people over to your house for a gathering (also incurring costs - even if people bring something to cover the catering bit, you still have to clean up afterwards) you wouldn't consider it as an opportunity to profit right? (Or you are and are just hosting an MLM party or have some sort of agenda to push).
I'm not sure there is one answer here. I guess it all depends on the instance. Also consider that it's pretty early on, some instances might ask you money to join, others might ask for donations and yet others might show ads or be completely paid for by the hoster. Having a small instance doesn't necessarily need to cost a lot.
They aren't
Lemmy is a non-profit that receives grant funding through NLnet's NGI0 Discovery Fund. And also - individual giving.
Individual instances can fund themselves how they want. Besides donations - there’s certainly a world where some servers start hosting sponsored content to keep afloat. Given that users have so many alternatives, there’s a limit in how much they could get away with.
There’s also a world in which small government would run and operate instances if this gets popular enough. No reason why somewhere like Estonia can’t do so as a promotion of their booming tech industry.
Lemmy is a non-profit that receives grant funding through NLnet’s NGI0 Discovery Fund.
Okay, so I found the NLnet project page you alluded to and I've also checked Github and various pages on join-lemmy.org, but I haven't found anything that actually says how the project is organized from a tax perspective. I don't doubt @dessalines@lemmy.ml et al.'s egalitarian intent, but is it actually a an official non-profit organization (e.g. 501(c)3 or the equivalent in whatever country the project is incorporated in), or have they not yet bothered to do the paperwork to form a business entity separate from themselves as individuals, or what?
On the website: Stichting NLnet is a recognised philantropic non-profit foundation according to the Netherlands Tax Authority (Belastingdienst). Here is a link to NLnet's Articles of Association, which is in Dutch.
To be honest, I'm definitely not interested in this enough to do anymore research than that, but you're welcome to run it through Google Translate and see if you find anything. And report back if you like. I'm not well versed in European (specifically Dutch) non-profit space to have an opinion on this. If it was American, that's a different story.
I do see that the the NLnet Discovery Fund is itself funded by the EU's Horizon Europe program (formally Horizon 2020). Here is some details on that.
The way I'm reading it is that NLnet gave the developers of Lemmy a grant, but unless I'm mistaken, that doesn't usually mean that the developers are working for NLnet. Does NLnet manage the project funds directly (e.g. paying the developers a wage, acting as the recipient for web donations, etc.) or did it just disburse the grant to some other tax entity (e.g. what your "articles of association" link calls a "stichting," I guess?) that actually represents the Lemmy project?
Honestly, I'm only just kind of idly curious myself. I could probably find out simply by messaging the devs and asking, but it's probably not worth bothering them. I suspect that, if they haven't already, they'll create a proper non-profit foundation later.
Grant recipients don't necessarily need to file as foundation. For example, college students receive grants.
It's very possible NLnet manages funds that pay recipients as 1099-equivilent contractors. At which point, all Lemmy has to do is document that their grant money is used to sustain the mission to the Foundation.
Fun to speculate, but again - I don't really care enough about this to dive much deeper, lol.
Grant recipients don’t necessarily need to file as foundation. For example, college students receive grants.
It’s very possible NLnet manages funds that pay recipients as 1099-equivilent contractors. At which point, all Lemmy has to do is document that their grant money is used to sustain the mission to the Foundation.
Right, in other words, they receive it as business income for their sole proprietorship (or general partnership, or incorporated business entity), not as wages as an employee of the entity that awarded the grant. Point is, whatever the entity is, it would be separate from NLnet and therefore not necessarily a non-profit just because NLnet is.
Also, if the Lemmy devs are still acting as an unincorporated sole proprietorship or general partnership (with all the donations and such being treated as personal income and with no separation between business assets and personal assets), then the fact that the project is hockey-sticking right now means it's probably about time to get serious and incorporate, both to protect themselves legally by separating their personal and business finances, and so that they can apply to be an official non-profit entity and make donations tax-deductible.
I think you might really be asking about sustainability, not profitability (profit is what you have after all the bills are paid). It's generally donation-based. I'm sure different communities will have different ways of soliciting donations.
EDIT: I'm no longer partial to the below. I much more like PrimalAnimist's suggestions.
~~For larger, expensive instances, I'm partial to determining the cost of running a single user over some period of time (say, 5 years), and posting that little datum on the community info. Then, each user that donates that amount gets a badge reward. Users that pay double the minimum get a different badge, and so on. Cycle the badges every n years. Some users will have fancier badges, displaying a kindness for the poor and badgeless. Cultivate a culture of gratitude for those who support, and you won't have to worry so much about not having enough.~~
I dislike this idea because it creates "tiers" of users. Communities might not allow comments from anyone without at least the basic donation badge. Donations incentivized with perceived perks are made with selfish intent. The capitalist system has trained us that in order for people to do something, they must be given a sufficient reward.
This is not true. Using rewards as incentives to motivate people will create division among individuals. When rewards are introduced, the focus shifts from intrinsic motivation and personal satisfaction to the external reward itself. This leads to a competitive mindset where individuals start comparing themselves to others solely based on the rewards they receive.
For example, I've seen something as simple as a user tag being used to restrict and divide a community. (r/conservative comes to mind first).
Long term, I see business opportunities for ad supported or paid instances with enterprise level management (reliability, maintenance, scaling, backup). The important factor is that they can’t lock you in - if you decide you don’t like the policies at your current instance, go find a new one.
I suspect we may also see more instances focused on very specific topics to keep operating cost down.
Agree, and such instances would be more resilient to federation issues. I think communities should be spread out on small instances, while users are concentrated on larger instances with better infrastructure.
I utterly agree.
"lemmy only counts users who posted or commented as active users."
What exactly did this mean? What are the benefits of being an "active" user, or the drawbacks for not? Does that impact the effectiveness of that user's up/downvotes, or something?
This is just for the statistics that show the number of active users on a platform/instance/community level.