It feels like more Lemmy apps are going to make their way on to the app stores. With more apps, comes more people. More people, more API calls. How do we scale this server and hopefully all of the others to come, financially?
There are some REALLY interesting Podcast 2.0 features in the works. Especially using “value4value” and “boosting” as a way for listeners to tip their favorite podcasts and fund them directly. I wonder if somehow we can learn from it?
For those who do not know, hopefully these Podcasting 2.0 features will help podcasters continue to thrive in world where companies like Spotify and Amazon have decided to destroy our incredible open and free podcast networks by making “exclusives” and putting them behind paywalls that don’t follow the open standards.
I’d really love to integrate Podcasting 2.0 RSS and the fediverse. How cool would it be if every podcast episode just had its own place in the fediverse with a place to chat and it all worked together somehow automatically.
I dunno. Just a thought.
Here’s some info:
Well, lemmy isn’t reddit, if one instance is down/closed then there’s a thousand other ones where you can go. So there’s no one big server that be overloaded from api calls - more like a million of them sharing the load.
As far as funding goes, each instance would decide on there own, but in the end most of them would settle for a patreon page or something similar.
I think an API call to a server is less demanding than visiting or scraping the site. So I don’t think a 3rd party app is going to cause more issues than the traffic itself, which the hosters already have figured out. Reddit issues with API calls aren’t that they cause increased server load, it was that they didn’t get to serve you ads or collect your data. Lemmy doesn’t do either of those so that isn’t an issue.
As of now, it’s all up to those who volunteered to host these open/large instances. They can accept donations but if they decide to shut down an instance, it’s gone. In the future I feel being able to gracefully handle instances disappearing would be the best bet. Financial reasons aren’t the only reason this could happen. Too many users could in theory break instances, as you can only scale vertically so much and at the moment I haven’t seen any talk of successful horizontal scaling. If users of an abandoned/deleted instance could easily move to another with minimal data loss this would mitigate this issue.
For long term viability, my opinion is legal entities (corporations, non-profits, etc) should be setup to handle larger instances that arise. They’ll operate as non-profits do, taking donations and hiring people to do the work that needs to be done. Expecting lone sysadmins to handle large user bases without some legal status/protection is a recipe for disaster. This also gives these larger instances a better standing to work within the current systems that will start asking questions/regulating if things get too big.
As for bringing in new users, these apps will have to make the process easier. It’s up to these apps to educate people or link to materials to educate people on the fediverse. These apps should be made to try and move users to instances that have the capacity to handle it and offer options. Yes, some users might find the fediverse and instances overwhelming but this is a common story with new things. Expecting everything to conform to how users currently operate is more for business interests, where user growth is a requirement for increased earnings and friction is bad.
The main concern with centralizing is once you have lemmy instances become centralized you arrive at the same position as reddit. What’s to say the largest lemmy instances won’t hold their instance hostage? Sell it to a corporation who liquidates it for the data and sees running the instance as a loss? Start defederating or limiting federation with other instances with malicious motives? If there is dozens of these larger instances, this will be easier to mitigate than the current handful of instances. It’s best if things are more decentralized, this is the goal of the fediverse after all.
Overall, lemmy isn’t ready for mass adoption as it stands. More work will need to be done and yes this is in “the future”. The current user base spiking doesn’t change the fact the code isn’t there, nor the fact code takes time. At the moment, you either suffocate instances by becoming too popular (lemmy.ml) or adapt and help contribute to get to the point where a large user base can be handled (such as mastodon has done).
I’ve been happy with lemmy.world and Ruud’s management, so I started contributing $2 a month to his patreon. I never paid a cent to reddit, but I want this place to succeed.
I think a Wikipedia donation system could work. Just takes a percentage of the core users to contribute.
Edit: https://opencollective.com/mastodonworld or https://patreon.com/mastodonworld
Maybe a little off topic but the briar project recently released their briar mailbox feature that allows what looks like something of a briar server that is deployed via android app. You connect to it via qr code and keep it always powered and connected to the internet. With so many people having android phones that they aren’t using anymore I think it would be awesome to continue this and allow people to deploy their own instances via second android device + android server app.
I just look to the microblogging side of the network (which has about 10 million total users) as a case study.
The ideal situation? More nodes are added to the network to spread the load and control away from a few very large and very expensive instances. The realistic situation? Some instances manage to secure external funding (such as mastodon.social) and grow extremely large at the expense of smaller instances that shut down from a lack of users and funding. Decentralized protocols like the fediverse and email are not immune to centralization thanks to lazy users who join the biggest instance. My pessimistic outlook is that the Fediverse will eventually become like email, with a few very big instances and a lot of spam making it difficult for smaller instances to enter the network. Enjoy the fresh new internet feeling while it lasts and move on when the platform starts to decay.
It would be nice if developers would stand up their own instances for the apps to default to. They will be in the best position to collect funds directly from users in a way they are used to.
