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. :)
I understand, and for the most part, I agree, but I would still like to find a paid instance.
It seems like most instances have a donation link, so you could just donate on a regular basis.
I already do.
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 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.
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:
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.
Market research to start their own paid instance likely.
That would be tough lol 😆
I mean one day maybe but it'll be like paying for Linux, which exists, but you have to work for it and propose an important benefit.
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.
Absolutely, I think people are still thinking in the mindset of web 2.0. The fediverse is the internet before capitalism ruined it.
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
If a user from your instance posts to a community and wants to upload a file, that file will be saved to your instance. Not the instance in which the community is. Keep that in mind.
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 did the same thing for the same reason. Admin approval for everything and I'm the only admin. Basically a personal instance for me and my friends if they're too lazy to host but want to try Lemmy.
Exactly. I went one step further and decided not to use my admin account as my main. I don't run around as root on servers so I try not to do that with apps. It's easier with Lemmy because once it's set up all the admin tasks hit my email.
I also wanted to avoid that vulnerability that hit Lemmy World a few weeks ago that was only possible because the server admin got their jwt stolen, which wouldn't have been so impactful if they weren't on the admin account.
I didn't read the story about how exactly he lost the jwt, but is it still as big of an issue since 2fa was introduced?
I guess existing jwt hashes will bypass 2fa, but I'm not super worried since my instance has 3 users.
2fa was in at the time. IIRC the jwt was granted after 2fa so it didn't matter.
You've got a point though, small instances aren't gonna be nearly as useful as a giant one to threat actors. Assuming you don't give them a reason to go after you specifically they wouldn't have a reason to target such a tiny server.
Still though, I don't need that shiny A next to my name so I'm good with how I have it set up.
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.
Commenting because I'm also interested
When I finally look into it I'll make sure to let you know. Are you going to selfhist yourself or just want to use it if I actually set it up? Maybe you can help me host it. Lol
If you let me know how to help you, then I'm in. I have a raspberry pi 4 and some external hard drives. That's it. But I also have some money and would rather help you than host a lonely instance, Mr skankhunt
I'll have to read about local laws and if I can get in trouble for what the users do/upload. I have no interest in dealing with legal shit... If I'm safe then I'll have to see how much people charge for storage these days. I don't really want to run it from my house and I don't have a lot of disposable income to run it out in the internet somewhere.
Your instance will be mirroring (essentially storing a copy of) content from instances it federates with. Depending on your local laws you might be held liable for this.
Yeah, Thank you for this.
It sounds like I'll also have to store any images my users upload. I'm all for free speech and being anonymous online so I'll avoid logs and the like but I guess I'll have to read Canadian law to see if I want to risk running an instance or not. I cant afford a lawyer, nor do I want to deal with anything that goes along with that.
The GDPR is also a whole other beast that could suckerpunch any instance at any point.
Have you heard of what happened to Rammy? The admin went MIA, a bunch of trolls set up shop, and they (as expected) got defederated from the majority of the network for being an unmoderated trashfire. Or earlier incidents regarding a bunch of open registration instances getting bot sign ups even if those accounts never did anything (to the best of my knowledge anyway).
If you are going to host an instance open to public registrations you need moderation. Even if it's just to keep the spammers and trolls at bay.
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.
I think https://masto.host/ offers what you want, you can pay to host mastodon. I haven’t seen the same for Lemmy.
https://communick.com are intending to provide those services. (.news is their Lemmy server)
Good reminder that I still have to create an alt there
elest.io seems to be OSS focused host where you pay per hour and they offer an option to move to any other host.
https://elest.io/open-source/lemmy
https://elest.io/open-source/mastodon
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. 
social.digitalcourage.de and mastodon.green both are Mastodon server with a (paid) membership model.
A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!
Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy