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?
Not sure how tech savvy you are, but hosting your own server costs a few euros per month, you decide how long it stays up and you are chief in command.
Second this. And other instances would still be accessible. Even more so since lemmy.world (along with probably some others) is starting censorship, which wouldn’t affect you, since you decide what you can see.
I’d love to self host one for everyone but not allow communities. The idea would be that I federate with everyone no matter what and leave a what the user wants to sub to up to them. No censorship at all.
Not having communities would mean I don’t have to worry about what I host and have other instances defederate with me. Plus, I have no interest in being mod, dealing with DCMA,user reports, etc.
You can disable communities on your instance as an admin, but you would need to disable uploading.
Would that allow someone to still post/upload on other communities? Honestly haven’t looked into this at all. Was going to in a couple weeks when I have time to actually sit down and test
Yep. My instance just has me on it and posting elsewhere works without issue. Anything I upload goes to my instance and federates out. It’s really quite great not having to worry about the instance drama when big ones defederate from each other. I also turned off NSFW so I don’t have to worry about any of that content (legal or otherwise) even hitting my server.
Here’s an image of me making this comment via Sync for Lemmy
Edit: I have community creation locked down to admins, which everything disables them on my instance.
I assume lemmy doesn’t clean up images after X days/years? it would be pointless if it does… I’m a datahoarder but paying storage costs to host this stuff doesn’t fit in the budget. I guess I have a lot of things to consider. Thanks!
Yeah I haven’t found anything for cleanup maintenance. Right now with just me my disk usage is increasing ~300MB per day. I’m debating purging stuff older than 30 days or something. The only stuff where my server is the source of truth is my profile and communities on my instance.
We’ll see though, this is just a fun little side thing I’m not taking too seriously.
Yeah, I may go with this option, but I really like the idea of helping create an economy. I suspect one of the Achilles heels of the Fediverse will be instances disappearing after users based their identity on a free server that the host eventually lost interest. Time will tell. I may be wrong. But also may be right.
You don’t need a subscription for instances to stay around long term - you need to use them. Instances without users shut down, naturally.
Instance owners don’t do this to get rich or have someone else pay the bills I believe. They just want users.
And I think many of us hate subscriptions. :)
Absolutely, I think people are still thinking in the mindset of web 2.0. The fediverse is the internet before capitalism ruined it.
I understand, and for the most part, I agree, but I would still like to find a paid instance.
For what purpose? Why not a free one? I mean, if the price is right I’ll host you one.
I’ve been considering hosting one myself, this would give me a push in that direction.
Why if I may ask?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 :-) !
As I recall, https://me.dm/ is Mastodon instance that were paid as part of Medium subsripction.
I wish they also had a Lemmy server. I’ve always liked Medium and have subscribed to them in the past. If they offered a lemmy servers as part of the whole package, that would be a big win for me. 
