Realistically how does the fediverse make money and remain sustainable? only donations?
Fediverse@kbin.social – 2 points – I started using mastodon when musk bought twitter and kbin with all the reddit API shitshow. I like the idea of the fediverse but how does it have longevity?
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Is there any reason an instance couldn't just copy Reddit's model? (Advertising that's hidden if you subscribe, paid awards, etc.)
The beauty of federation isn't that we have a million instances. It's that if there's a problem with one instance (such as greed), we can just go to another. In effect it adds competition instead of walled gardens.
Even if there's only a couple big instances that make up the majority of users it's not really a problem as long as the federation option holds. It's not the leaving that makes federation great, it's the ability to leave.
An instance can do whatever it wants, within the terms of the license of the software it runs.
But so can every other one. And ad drive social media has demonstrated itself to be toxic social media. So, you'll end up with a lot of other sites defederating from it.
Being ad driven is what has led to Reddit doing what it's doing, after all. The people who have come here from there should be much more concerned about emulating that kind of model all over again. Otherwise, why not just stay there?
It needs to be a subscription model, an ad model, or a donation model. It's not free to host a website especially one with millions of users. I think a Wikipedia style model could work.
It can, if people see it as as valuable to them as Wikipedia.