Asklemmy

As you're on lemmy.ml

This is something I think a lot of people trip up on. This community is hosted there but the user isn't on that instane - so they would not be supported the instance they actually on... Unless I've missed something?

I suspected that “Support Lemmy” only supported the project. Judging by another comment, That seems like the best place to put a dollar at this point in time. That way, platform itself can improve and become more robust for all the instances. But it’s good to know that if a smaller instance is doing something I find particularly valuable, I should consider also donating support if it’s an option.

Lastly, I hope admins and members incurring the costs will talk to their communities when they need support. Although most discussions make it seem like those individuals are more than willing to host their servers as their contribution in support of decentralized social networks. I just want to consider all ways community members like myself can support projects like this, so they never feel they need to surrender to outside influences for financial gain. It may not be possible to predict or stop the future, if that were to happen. But if supporting the fediverse from the inside out has clear pathways now, It will be easier.

That and right now Lemmy probably needs development that benefits the whole community way more than individual servers. The network can't work of we hit hard scalability issues, but individual instances can come and go to fill the gaps. Global improvement to the server software can result in instances getting much cheaper to run with optimizations too.

That's noble, but what if it grows beyond the admin's capability to pay the hosting costs?

I would most likely do it like the host of your instance too. My experience in nonprofit over the last 15 years is that if you give people a clear path to give to something that provides value for them and a community, you just need a clear path to support. The costs you’ll incur doing something you believe in are accepted, and money received is just a bonus. But without an option no one can help, and they rarely ask “how can I pay for what your giving away” like I did in this post.