If the reddit exodus happens and Lemmy gets even 2% of reddit’s daily active users, how will Lemmy sustain the increased traffic? I know donations are an option, but I don’t think long term donations will be sustainable. Most users will never donate.

I know the goal of Lemmy isn’t to make money, but I know that servers and storage costs add up quickly. Not to mention the development costs.

I would love to hear the plans for how to offset those costs in the future?

      • Kichae
        7•2 years ago

        A big issue there has also been single-user admin/mod teams. Running a site of several thousand active users is not something just one or two people can do, especially when you also have to screen remote content that’s streaming in.

        You can always shut down user registrations if the server’s reaching the point of financial sustainability.

        • Austin-Philp
          9•2 years ago

          This is something that needs to happen more - The whole point of the fediverse is that you don’t need any high population instances. Look at the situation with lemmy.ml - they’re hitting major infra issues as a result of their high user count, but they’re still accepting new users (as far as I can tell). Just close the doors and post a list of reccomended other instances with similar focuses.

          You can still access all the same content, regardless of your instance, or even platform

        • scrollbars
          2•2 years ago

          It’s this. I love the idea of running an instance and have considered it many times. But modding the thing is no joke. It’s real work that needs to be taken seriously.

      • RileyEnglish
        1•2 years ago

        There are more Mastodon instances now than ever before. Even though the active user count has been a pretty flat line for a few months now the number of new servers continues to increase week to week.