Reddit migrator here (shocking, I know)

Just wondering because I found out about all this yesterday and just realized the ammount of independent servers, but no sign of any ads or sponsors. So… is it all based on donations?

Also don’t just lurk, if you know you should answer because lemmy only counts users who posted or commented as active users.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    241 year ago

    It takes money to run, but it doesn’t need money to “be”.

    Imagine a group of people rent a building to hang out in; of you’re a regular you chip in some bucks. Lots of people, a few bucks each, roof over your head.

    Get out of that “free” mindset. It was a trap all along. Some of us old pharts have known this, some of us (not me) have been coding stuff like Lemmy and other open software all along.

    Right away i knew Lemmy.world was viable; I’m gladly paying 5 bucks/mo! No ads! No corporate extraction of personal data!

    Hell, pay TWO bucks a month. Seriously wtf 2 bucks you could lose and not notice.

    • NutWrench
      link
      fedilink
      English
      81 year ago

      Yup. You can be profitable without expecting to get rich. The insane corporate expectations of “20% growth every year forever” directly leads to the enshitification of everything it touches, especially social media.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    181 year ago

    It doesn’t have to be profitable. Especially for people that already have computers running 24/7 and good Internet, a Lenny server is just another process they run on their machine. Admin/mod duties would probably be the hardest part.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    17
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Like many said, it’s not about profitability but sustainability. I signed up to donate $2 per month to help run the servers for lemmy.world. I’m very happy with this instance (and the fediverse in general) and want to contribute. There are plenty of other people willing to do the same. Together, we will make something much bigger and better than reddit over time.

    I love their $8/month tier description: “The $8 verified user tier. You’ll be allowed to place a blue checkmark behind your name. You’ll have to do that yourself though. And you could also do that without donating ;-).”

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    171 year ago

    One of the points of federated and decentralized social media is that there’s no need to profit. The concept is that communities are built by individuals instead of a central institutions and the communal gain is what incentivizes folks to host servers and participate. I see it as a similar ecosystem as the open source software community who constantly gives everything away for free because it serves the common good, enables faster innovation and widens the spread of knowledge that makes everyone more successful/efficient at the end of the day. If these decentralized social networks can provide the same level of benefit as Reddit, I.e. people adding “Reddit” to their search queries to get first hand answers, I think that’s the singularity point at which people will realize giant social network corporations are completely unnecessary. I can’t wait. Seems inevitable to me because the entire business model of the current centralized networks is unsustainable - part of the reason you see Reddit making such drastic moves regarding their API or Meta investing in anything and everything outside of social media or Twitter throwing unnecessary digital products at the wall and hoping people pay for some of them. Once decentralized social networks are mainstream the ad target pool is going to be greatly affected and these companies will collapse under their own weight if they haven’t pivoted to something else.

    • AttemptNo209
      link
      fedilink
      21 year ago

      What’s the general consensus as far as fear for future profiteering? Right now these platforms are great because the are run by people who genuinely care. Do you think there is any risk of this growing so much that federated content reaches the front page of search engines, followed by advertisers wanting space here? Or what about risks like reddit gold which was initially just a fun add on, which then became a “temporary” paid feature, which ended as a full scale scam.

      Anyway, I love what we have for now, I just want to know what everyone else is speculating for the future.

      • Rentlar
        link
        fedilink
        21 year ago

        Meta, a well-known for-profig company are gearing up to join the Fediverse, reaction is mixed, some server operators seem keen on welcoming them, some cautiously optomistic while others want nothing to do with Meta at all.

        In terms of paid features, might be a thing down the line but it will very from server to server. Cool extra statuses (e.g. Wow I’m a gold tier superstar supporter on this instance) likely won’t appear on other instances unless they decide to include something in the federation protocol that would display it.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        11 year ago

        The thing with the Fediverse is that things like this aren’t really possible. The creators of Lemmy are pretty anti-capitalist, so the source-code won’t ever support ads.

        An instance admin could try to modify it to incude Ad Sense, but the users would just reject that instance and move to a free one.

        I personally wouldn’t mind premium features, like animated emotes and stuff for people that pay for monthly subscriptions, but again, things like that don’t work in the fediverse because they won’t be supported on every instance.

        Maybe there will be some creative solutions that get made, but it’s highly unlikely due to how things are setup.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      31 year ago

      The open collective link goes to Mastadon world. Is it related to Lemmy.world? I look on lemmy.world website, and I don’t see a clear link to funding.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        81 year ago

        Run by the same people. Donations to that link are used for both.

        Some have raised concerns about wanting to fund one but not the other (e.g. earmark their donation to Lemmy but not Mastodon) but the admins said they weren’t gonna do that yet.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    151 year ago

    I think this may be the wrong question. I am the administrator of a reverse engineered PS3 video game server, so it’s illegal for me to make a profit or any kind of revenue or donations from that platform. However, I maintain it for thousands of users simply because I and others enjoy it and want it to exist. That’s not a sustainable model for a business or for running something as gigantic as reddit, but it’s what I want and enjoy, and for right now it’s affordable, and I’m happy with that.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        11 year ago

        It costs me roughly $15-25 a month to host our game server, but I have other costs like our website that I’m dealing with as well, so taking all those other things into account and I’m probably spending something like $30 a month for now. I’m actively working to migrate my Wix site to WordPress to save money. Now, if we had thousands of concurrent users instead of like 30-40 concurrent users on a typical day, or if we needed significantly more storage, my costs would probably go up a lot. The growing storage and user count are both important things I’m thinking about carefully, because I imagine there might come a time I need to reevaluate our strategy

  • Vincent St. Pierre
    link
    fedilink
    English
    91 year ago

    I am a proud monthly donor. My couple of bucks I send Ruud and the admin team every month helps make this corner of the internet a reality.

    So, that’s how it’s funded.

    If you’re able, please consider sending in a donation. You can do so at Open Collective or Patreon.

    • Drunemeton
      link
      fedilink
      English
      11 year ago

      Help out a sprout?

      Both those links go to Mastodon not Lemmy. Am I right in assuming that your account Is on an instance that hosts both? Probably federating with M before feasting with L next?

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      11 year ago

      I didn’t know you could support lemmy via patreon. Thanks for the info! I’m going to start donating right now!

  • A Phlaming Phoenix
    link
    fedilink
    English
    91 year ago

    They’re not, and profit isn’t the reason people run Lemmy instances. In fact, avoiding the problems that arise when human communication is capitalized upon is a driving theme behind open source software and federated social media.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      21 year ago

      Profit might not be the point, but it is going to cost time and resources to run an instance. Unless the admin is just planning on paying for everyone’s ability to use Lemmy on their instance out of their own pocket, ads or subscriptions may be necessary. And depending on how much time and effort goes into keeping it up, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for them to want to make a profit on it so they feel like it’s worth the effort.

      I’d hate for an instance to blow up in popularity only for the admin to decide it isn’t worth the time/effort/cost and shuts it down.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      21 year ago

      Its been so long since ive been on a part of the internet like this, it used to be almost all like this, now its almost all a buisness.

      • Sota4077
        link
        fedilink
        English
        11 year ago

        Right. I’m loving this. It is a huge breath of fresh air. Obviously the people hosting Lemmy.world have to pay for this though. If they put out a subscription that was minimal in cost I would pony up even now with the jank and all. This place is worth investing my time and energy into I feel.

  • Bob
    link
    fedilink
    English
    91 year ago

    Why does everything have to be for profit?

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      101 year ago

      This is the real question we have to ask ourselves. We really need to move away from looking at the internet as just a resource to extract money from, and instead see it through a social lense again. Look what late stage capitalism has done to our digital, social gathering places. Almost everything has become a product that needs to be profitable, to compete for attention and to extract as much data from users as possible and discourse has suffered greatly from it. I mean billions are donated to content creators simply because people want to contribute. Why stop there? We can shape the internet the way we want if we simply contribute and put our heads together. We don’t have to make a profit. That’s our strength.

      • Apathy Tree
        link
        fedilink
        English
        31 year ago

        I like this take.

        Due to life circumstances, I basically live on the internet, and have since the late 90s. My first comment on here was about how I support socialized social media.

        I want to go back to a time when I could actually talk to random people, and have meaningful discourse, even if it isn’t as big of a community or as content-filled. I want my social space to be interactive, not passive.

        Profit-seeking models push for passive consumption rather than actual meaningful engagement. I’d much rather have a non-profitable platform that people keep alive because they want the same thing I do. I’ll donate to it, as long as it stays that way.

    • AtHeartEngineer
      link
      fedilink
      English
      01 year ago

      I think they are asking “how are things paid for” not necessarily “are they making tons of excese profit”

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        1
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Profit is the money leftover after everything has been paid for, though. All profit is, by definition, excess.

        You’re probably right and the OP is just confusing terms, but I think it’s an important distinction to make.

  • TheSpookiestUser
    link
    fedilink
    English
    81 year ago

    They aren’t. Do they need to be, though? Maybe once the scale gets gargantuan, but even then - is it strictly necessary to be profitable? As long as donations cover costs, I assume most instance administrators want what the rest of us want - a good platform for discussion and content aggregation.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      11 year ago

      I agree with this sentiment, there are a lot of admins who are very virtuous and and will pay money out of pocket and dedicate time to this cause which is appreciated. The big thing in the beginning is the actual time it takes to run an instance, when servers get big they are going to need employees, no one can be on call 24/7 for something that costs them money (with the exception of a child).

      Once Lemmy has around a million active users funding the actual server costs will become a problem but I’m sure people will figure out how to make money off of it well before then, wether it be ads, data selling, alternative services, subscription models or something else.

      Whats important right now is that as a community we do what we can to keep this place alive, and to help out the hard working admins.

    • rokejulianlockhart
      link
      fedilink
      11 year ago

      That’s a good point. If the organization that hosts the instance is non-profit, they merely need cover their costs.

  • TheOlympian
    link
    fedilink
    81 year ago

    I mean, Wikipedia does it and they’re the 7th most visited website on the internet. 🤷

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    71 year ago

    Any Lemmy/fediverse instance could come up with a localized monetization scheme for people that browse through it, but it wouldn’t affect other instances (or if they were injecting ads into feeds, they’ll just get blocked by everyone else), but for the most part, it’s got more of an IRC server vibe, no monetization needed when community volunteers are plentiful and the barrier to entry is low. Eventually ‘big boys’ like Lemmy.world will want a more formal and reliable way of paying for their server and bandwidth needs beyond primarily unsolicited donations ($ and time) by volunteers.

    These are not profit generating services, they are community services. For now.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    71 year ago

    Things can be valuable without being profitable. A hug from someone you love does not generate any profit but is still a good thing that should exist. Likewise, a community resource like a Lemmy instance does not need to justify it’s existence by being profitable. It can simply exist as something that people get value from. The fact that we often lose sight of this is a result of living in a capitalistic society that over-emphasises the value of something producing profit and underemphasises any other possible value. As for the implied question of, how does a Lemmy instance get the money to pay the costs required to run it? That’s going to vary from one instance to another and how that money is raised should be a factor in which one you sign up to and which ones you connect with. In the case of Lemmy.world, it is, afaik, presently (and likely in the future) run as a non-profit for it’s own inherent value and is funded by user donations. A big point of federated communities is to allow those communities to be able to operate for their own benefit, rather than be reliant on commercial investment that will later create a tension of different incentives.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      11 year ago

      I don’t think a hug was a good example, for the exact reason you mentioned in the second half of your comment. A hug does not cost anything to give, other than a small amount of time. Everyone gets time for free, until they don’t anymore.

      Servers cost money AND time, both to get and run the equipment. Not to mention regular maintenance as hard drives especially don’t last forever. It’s easier to do something unprofitable for the sake of it being a valuable thing, such as picking up trash on the side of the road. But most people can’t just give shoes to the homeless because it’s a good thing, simply because that costs money and time, which the average person does not have an exorbitant amount of money to give away.

      To me, the question is moreso how do lemmy instances get the money to exist, and OP just used the wrong word. Which as you mentioned, through donations. I also think it would be a pretty neat feature to have a setting where you can enable ads (off by default) to further support the instance without having to directly enter your credit card information.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        1
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        To me, the question is moreso how do lemmy instances get the money to exist

        Yes it is.

        That is not the same thing as making a profit.