Hey all,

Welcome to the LemmyFund community. This community is made to discuss how we could shape a good, privacy-friendly method to fund your favourite instances and communities.

The code will be available on GitHub, but the main discussion will be held in this community.

Please have a look at the docs repository to get an idea of the main hurdles I’m trying to tackle. Any help is more than welcome!

Thanks all,

SirQuack

  • Spzi@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Thanks for the answer, makes the idea more tangible for me.

    It might be that I’m completely wrong and data is duplicated all over the place, that should keep the bandwidth usage to instance users and server-to-server talk, which makes the cost-base more local.

    I believe that is the case, yes. Users interact with local copies of remote content, and federated servers share these interactions with each other. This also explains how defederated communities do not disappear, but you can only see interactions from other local users.

    It might still be true that some instances have a higher operating cost than others, possibly even while having less users. While a video instance shares some load with others, it still has to host all of it itself. But don’t take my word on this one, I’m still learning.

    That point needs clarification from my point of view: What funding challenges do instances face, and are the challenges different for different types of instances?

    That would still not benefit communities, which is where I want to be able to possibly head towards too, that you can fund communities you interact with directly, whether local or federated.

    What funding do communities need? Unless we’re talking about paid moderators, I think the instance pays all the bills.

    • SirQuackOPMEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      While a video instance shares some load with others, it still has to host all of it itself.

      I think services like gifycat / imgur will pop up eventually to flatten out the data storage problem. Storing copies everywhere doesn’t seem too sustainable (both economically and ecologically). I guess time will tell.

      What funding do communities need? Unless we’re talking about paid moderators, I think the instance pays all the bills.

      I don’t know, it’s a long term goal. Moderators have been volunteers for forever with reddit and that worked out, but having some fund to give awards or compensations seems to be a good thank you. That’s all not part of a first release.

      My first version will likely be a “how much you want to donate” and a system that considers that input a full payment, giving the user an “invoice” in the end just to show where their theoretical donation would’ve gone.

      From there we’ll let the public debate decide if this is usable, sustainable and reasonable.