this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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It's not like there's a lack of people running these services, and as Mastodon shows the donation model works fine. The whole point of a federated ecosystem is that the cost of operation is amortized across many different servers.
People donate time, and some people host servers and pay bills because they can. I don't think the whole point of federation is amortizing the costs across instances, but it is a perk. Most people want to know what to join, which is why lemmy.world got so big, so fast. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'll bet their donations do not match their costs.
Mastodon is totally cool, I'm on board, but normies don't know what it is.
I'm just being realiatic here.
Mastodon has millions of users now, so clear the model scales just fine. Meanwhile, the fact that normies don't know what it is has nothing to do with your original point regarding hosting costs. I have no idea whether lemmy.world donations match the costs or not, but clearly given that there are plenty of Mastodon, PeerTube, Pixelfed, and Lemmy instances around now, the model works in general, and it can scale.
Well I hope so. Occasionally our nerd stuff leaks out into the world and does some real good. Maybe advertising is only needed to keep shareholders never-ending drive for profits. Wikipedia seems to do ok. I really do hope I'm wrong, but I think you are just being too optimistic, maybe it is because I'm old.
I'm personally fairly optimistic based on how much the fediverse has already grown over the past few years. I also don't really worry about mass mainstream adoption all that much. I think the only thing that really matters is sustainability.
The three things that really matter are having enough people to do development of the platforms, enough people to host servers, and enough users to generate content.
I'd argue that all of these requirements have already been met, and that means the fediverse will be around indefinitely. It might not grow quickly, but that's not necessarily a bad thing either. Rapid growth can be very disruptive and can derail the original ethos. I think slow and organic growth is far more preferable because new users end up internalizing the existing culture.
I'm not sure why you are getting downvoted. I'm optimistic for the same reasons and I think you are right about rapid growth being dangerous.
Linux was slow growth, not to mention GNU, but it is so good, and attracted the right kind of contribuitors.
Running these services has a cost and surely over the time it takes to grow, solutions will emerge. It is best to recognize those challenges and address them.
That's my thinking as well, there's an opportunity for a completely different kind of social ecosystem to develop that's not driven by the profit motive.