redditrefugee here
So, Lemmy.world is just one instance of lemmy… it maybe the biggest one, but its just one right? And it agrees to federate with other lemmy instances (like lemmy.ml)… got it. But at the end of the day, each instance is running on someones computer right? Whats the traffic like between these two? If I ran an instance, and federated with this site, what would that cost me? How much traffic does this instance produce?
Are we suppose to divide into our own instances to reduce costs, and then link them together through lemmy.world? wouldn’t that make it centralized? And then who is paying for THIS? How much is being a central hub between instances going to cost?
Sooner or later, we have to realize that these wonderful free things are usually a bubble that eventually pops when they have to start running ads.
Who is paying for this?
Textual data is surprisingly lightweight to host if you keep to core features. Traffic is quite light if you don’t bundle half of npm, all the trackers ever and a whole bunch of ads.
A few days ago I saw lemmy.ml publicise the instance specs it was running on, and it was surprisingly sane for the size of the instance.
I myself could easily afford the rent for that instance, and I’m not rich. I’ve seen bigger (gaming) servers funded by donations from like 12 people. It also has nothing pushing it to produce profit.
Lemmy’s fundamentals with regards to tech seem to be great, if not the most feature-rich. It will be fine.