Are there any paid services for either Lemmy or Mastodon? Something where, given it is a subscription service, you would expect them to stick around long-term?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I prefer paying for a service rather than donating. When you pay for something, there is an expectation of a service in return. I think the fediverse could benefit from creating an economy for this sort of thing.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

I use free, donation and paid services happily. Not against any model.

I do not think paid services are as stable as you are imagining. Lots of paid services go dark all the time. Even major ones.

I think the most stable would be to either run your own or pay someone to run one for you on a VPS. And for community stability, donate to various servers.

For long term, government/nonprofit funding would be good to have I think.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There is also just using one of a thousand free instances.

If you think a meager subscription from your part could pay for about anything (dev wise), I think you are wrong.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

He's talking about just hosting fees though and those could easily be covered for a few $/mo per user unless the instance becomes massive which isn't likely since most people hate subscriptions and most people even aware of Lemmy are technical enough to host their own if they are willing to invest actual money into it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Well, my point was that even is he pays hosting fees (for example) the big job is managing it all, which we (mostly? all?) do for free. If a company wants to ear money hosting Lemmy, it's gonna be either some big thing (host your own Lemmy for 5€/m) or one big instance like world, but it would cost a lot having paid people running it.

Guess my point was that he can pay a bit per month, but it won't guarantee anything at all. He's probably better off joining a medium-big free instance in the short medium and long run.

Now, this is just what I think :-) !

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I kind of feel the same way. When someone is offering service in exchange for pay, it signals that they're serious about this and see it as a part time job at least, as opposed to someone just doing it as a hobby or just for a learning experience.

In my search I found 3 that offer multiple services for a single donation/subscription:

Neat.Computer - Their terms of service weren't strong enough for me
Tromsite.com - I didn't like their Peertube upload policy
Tchncs.de - The one I ended up joining.

I really wanted a smaller instance, but I just couldn't find one that I was happy with.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I think the ideal provider would give you a package deal with an identity on a Mastodon, Lemmy, Pixelfed, and whatever else comes along servers.