this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2024
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I’ve been stating since I joined that Lemmy needs to find a way to sustain itself beyond donations.
If you're not paying with real money or work, someone else is, or you're paying with something else.
If you need to show me an ad every once in a while I’m all for it. I’m not saying go full Reddit, but as a non-profit, please try and break even. Financial instability is just as bad as getting hacked or ddos’d.
Wikipedia managed to do it on donations only. Federated social media is similar in many ways and I think it's entirely possible that we may get development and hosting to be funded in a similar fashion.
And most open source projects run under this model. I'm leaving if ads appear tbth
I think the lesson that should be beginning to crystallise in people's minds these days is that we have to pay. If we don't, we get Facebook, Digg, Reddit, etc. We get inevitable enshitification. I mentioned Wikipedia because I think paying for it has sunk into many people's minds already. And generally we don't need everyone to pay. If the ones that can afford to spare a few bucks a month, do, it'll be enough.
The more this looks like Reddit the more likely I am to just switch back.
What are you referring to "looking like Reddit"? And why would you want their API lock-in, paid ads disguised as content, and obvious AI bot posts?
Wikipedia is different. It’s a lot more static to begin with.
You need a whale to keep this thing afloat, and if you get a whale, you also have to bend the knee.
I’d rather see some ads and reasonable employee compensation than relying on a wealthy benefactor.
And yet here we are, years in, Lemmy still growing
Anything beyond donation is asking for ads.
Its important to view this through an economic scope, what is the cost of a regular user to a server. Then how much are donors giving and does that supplement the cost of non paying regular users.
Also these non paying regular user add to Lemmy by buffing out numbers and attracting more donating user to the platform.
If we can donate then we definitely should and that way we can run under this model.
I've wondered if it would be possible to have a federated award system for funding... Similar to what Reddit was doing at one point. I actually kind of enjoy that and the fun emoji-like things that you'd see on interesting posts and comments.
That sounds like it's asking for some crypto currency mess though, or some (most?) instances just hanging them out for no charge.