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Welcome to the Age of Paid Social Media
(gizmodo.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
You're self hosting: no qualms with that.
The most populous server is mostly full of people freeloading. They're the same types who torrent without seeding.
It's usually not that big a deal as long as the server has some people chipping in for upkeep but no matter how you slice it: if your account is on a server you're either contributing to upkeep or leeching off the donations of others.
Self hosters arent leeching: they're participating in the decentralization.
With federation servers cache content from each other and then serve it to their users. If you have a ton of users you're using a ton of bandwidth. Simple as.
Thanks for the reply! After I wrote that I had another look at the context in which you posted your comment and realized I had misunderstood your meaning. That was why I deleted it. I can definitely appreciate that a very large instance will have higher operating costs and that people shouldn't be mooches. Cheers!