It probably goes against the philosophy or whatever of FOSS or Lemmy itself, but why not be a little evil so that you can actually sustain yourself? Donations can bring us far, but small non-intrusive ads can be a bliss in the skies for the people actually hosting the instance. Especially if there are millions of users uploading thousands of images and videos. This is extremely expensive.
Is running ads really that taboo?
EDIT: some people seem not to get the point of “millions of users”, which presumably includes non-techies that do not use adblockers. I mean that without ads (or mining?), no instance would be able to scale to the point where it can compete with Reddit for example. If you were to want that. And not for profit, but solely for sustainability.
Why do we want a single instance to be as large as reddit?
narrator: We don’t.
Ads on Reddit were one of the reasons that third party apps were so popular… They didn’t show them.
The whole point is to get away from Reddit, not just make several smaller copies. No thanks. I’ve donated already, and I’ll donate again (to Jerboa, Lemmy devs, and instances if they prove their worthiness.
I run my own instance and I don’t run ads because I frankly hate seeing them myself. They clutter up the web view, cause lag on the webpage, and frankly are annoying and ugly to look at.
I’d rather pay out of my own pocket to keep my instance going rather than run ads. Donations would be ideal to help keep it running for longer. As sad as it is, if I couldn’t keep paying the server costs and there weren’t any donations… I’d just shut the server down. I personally will never run ads on an instance I run. I don’t want to perpetuate or support the lifeless corporate greed cycle.
How much money does it even cost running an instance?
If it is just a single person private instance, relatively cheap (like a few USD). As you scale it up though it does quickly get pricey. I think mine is around 20-25ish/mo plus 4/mo for backups. I know some of the bigger instances are closer to 50-100/mo and it’s only going up as their users go up.
If donations work, it maybe a good way to finance it. Does it require loads of work and moderation? Or is it easy
Donations seem to be plan for instances in the fediverse, I’ve heard of some other efforts to monetize instances either through advertising or subscriptions but apparently those instance were quickly defederated with.
There was a bit of technical work to stand up my own instance but developers are working on making setting up an instance easier. I haven’t had to moderate anything on my instance yet as it is <10 users at the moment but it is definitely something you have to keep in mind as your instance grows.
Defederated means isolated more or less? Good luck with your instance!
I use https://1984.hosting (for privacy) to run my instance on a VPS. I’m using 1 core 2GB RAM VPS and that costs 10 dollars a month. So far everything looks to be running pretty well.
There probably are cheaper VPS providers as well, so you likely will be able to go cheaper.
And how many users can that host? With that price there maybe not really a need to actually run ads. What work is involved with running an instance?
Ads? Hard pass.
I’d rather set up my own server and federate.
You should set up your own server no matter what happens. That’s my plan.
I’m gone if there is ads even though I’d block them. I’m sick of ads. They have ruined the internet .
If they add a gold like feature that splits between the instance and the project that would be useful in addition to community donations.
I’m here because its not like the rest of the internet. I run tor relays to help the network, I contribute to foss projects and I seed distros too for the greater good. There is enough of us here to keep it going.
I’ve been chipping in for my mastodon server for over a year. The admin there posts the finances so we all know when it’s time to kick in again, but if we went to a paid rather than donated set-up, then I’d be OK with that. If my admin decided that he needed to run ads that were like printed newspaper ads then I wouldn’t mind so much. But ads that track me, ads that change size, ads that show up and block some or all of the screen, ads that play video and audio, pretend to be content etc are the ads I dislike and I would flee.
I think I’d rather have an optional membership to support the instance with perks or something. Not reddit gold though. Lemmy silver?
Someone who even takes the step into getting into the fediverse is probably using ad blockers for the purposes of security alone on a daily basis. I don’t see them disabling it.
The point of the fediverse is that hosts can pick their own business model - free, freemium, ad-supported, subscription. Just like e-mail, you sign up with the provider who provides the type of service you think best meets your needs. If they piss you off, you move to a different provider.
If the fediverse demands hosting for millions of users, someone will make a server to host millions.
I personally think “big” instances should focus on user/identity management, while communities live in small groups on small instances. This lets the identity providers include/exclude with much better granularity (compared to the beehaw mess) making the communities much less susceptible to being collateral damage.
I’d like this to be avoided as much as possible. But I am a bit weary about the fact that even small instances have to copy everything else on the Fediverse and thus will be very strained. Or do they copy the stuff only when their user wants to view it? Not sure how it works.
Or, we could donate and not have to see ads. I’m sick of ads. Are you running or planning on running an instance with ads? I’d love to follow along and see how your journey would go.
the same can be said about instances with millions of users uploading and downloading millions of images and videos. I’d love to follow along and see that journey would go. I mean, I hope I’m wrong but I just don’t see it being sustainable if you want to compete with reddit for example.
I don’t think I agree with it being a competition.
The solution is to lean into what Lemmy (and the Fediverse) was designed to do - be decentralized.
If we have more instances running, it would lighten the load on the larger instances (smaller instances can still subscribe to the larger one’s communities and such).
I think ads isnt a great idea. Firstly, generic ads don’t pay much, for actual good income you need to target ads, which now digs into users privacy and from there we have a slippery slope.
AO3 is a huge website that makes money purely off of donations. They often get like quadruple the amount they ask for every time they ask for money. Wikipedia comes to mind as well, although I’m not sure if they only make money off of the donations. Instead of donating to a third party service, Lemmy should build in the ability to donate into the website.
sorry, I block all ads by default. if I get popups indicating that I need to whitelist, I block elements until I never see that crap again or the site is unusable, after which I find a different site.
no ads. never
The advertisement model needs to die. No one wants to have their experience corrupted by panels trying to sell you something. We can find other ways to fund the network
Fuck ads
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