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How will lemmy instances survive if they get too big? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 1 year ago by s0phia to c/[email protected]

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I know there's donations and the owners can use their own money, but there's a limit. I doubt a platform with hundreds of thousands of daily users can survive with only donations.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I doubt a platform with hundreds of thousands of daily users can survive with only donations.

Is that really so though? Assuming some small percentage of the user base chooses to donate, would that not scale as the instance gets larger, as long as the percentage stays about the same?

I decided to toss something like a buck a month at my instance as I came with the reddit migration and didn't want to be a part of the problem. I also appreciate the ad-free space we have here on lemmy.

And it's not like running a PBS station or something in terms of costs. I'm actually pretty optimistic about the donation model, though maybe you're right? Maybe the optimism is misplaced?

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

Is that really so though? Assuming some small percentage of the user base chooses to donate, would that not scale as the instance gets larger, as long as the percentage stays about the same?

I would guess that it wouldn't scale in a linear fashion - earlier adopters who saw first-hand all the problems and what the admins had to do would tend to be more appreciative of their efforts than folks who arrive further down the line when everything is humming along.

That said, donating isn't the only string to the funding bow - affiliate links would tend to scale linearly with user numbers and I imagine we'll see bots or even hard coded regular expressions that spot links people add and tag an affiliate link on the end. If they are going to be used, instance admins might as well claw some cash back.