From this post (https://sopuli.xyz/post/15865566) on !AskMbin@fedia.io
It’s very likely related, but we also figured out that both of debounced’s (the admin of kbin.run) accounts on GitHub and Matrix were deleted last night. So there is a possibility that kbin.run is no more.
Ok. I have to ask: how many instances will have to go down before the majority of you drop the “you can always hop around to the next one” mentality and start thinking about ways to make the whole ecosystem more mature and professional?
Somebody should consider building a fork that works of bluesky’s content addressing scheme, that way communities can effectively be re-homed in full even if the server dies
Feel free to hire the devs?
You can and should fund the developers as much as possible , but I am talking about paying for the work done by the instance admins and moderators.
Oh fair point.
Feel free to hire the admins then!
Wait, that might have come out wrong…I am one of the admins. Should I hire myself?
Pros: you get to be your own boss.
Cons: you get to be your own employee.
Is there a solution to make the whole ecosystem mature and professional?
Certainly having everyone on one instance isn’t the way to go.
Implement OpenID? Or logging in with web3 (blockchain)? Or maybe account backup on google drive?
Any solution is better than no solution
Is the problem account making or data having persistence/backups?
Or is the issue having an account on service A, service A dieing and then when you create an account on service B you have to start over again, so we need to improve account portability?
I guess I also wonder… Is that a real problem for Lemmy? For Mastodon where you follow users sure, but does anyone care about their Lemmy account?
Ideally both issues should be fixed.
Personally I don’t care much about old posts that nobody reads anyway. But my nick, settings, subscriptions, avatar, and block list are important.
So perfect solution should be ability to log in from any instance, not just the one I made my account on.
Lemmy allows to export and import those in one click. Does Mbin also support this?
Can I export it from an instance that doesn’t exist anymore?
No, that’s why I save it every few weeks
We could have a constellation of smaller service providers, like we do for email nowadays. Everyone talks about Gmail+Outlook having 80% of the market, but we all forget that the tail still exists and that is made of hundreds of independent companies which make a healthy living charging $20-$50/year.
And what’s stopping that from happening now?
I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that servers die because they are difficult to maintain. This is perhaps especially true for kbin/mbin based servers.
I suppose for enough money some might be willing to maintain, but I’m not sure it’s that simple.
Mostly, culture. Everyone hates ads and corporate controlled networks, but almost no one wants to pay for a commercial service provider. People say that donations is an acceptable alternative, but no one pays enough for admins and developers to make a living out of this.
I can tell you that if if that I had 10000 paying customers for my commercial offering ($29/year for Lemmy, Mastodon, Matrix and Funkwhale), I’d be able to pay myself a good salary, support the developers (I pledge 20% of Communick’s profits to the devs) and hire a couple more people to help me. It is not a lot, and a lot less than Facebook extracts from each user by exploring user data.
I do not blame people for this, but that’s because as much as people hate ads and corporate controlled networks, they hate parting with their money more, and corporate-controlled, ad-ridden social media is free.
“Skin in the Game” is a powerful filter. If people are not willing to put their money where their outrage is, then their opinions and desires will be completely disregarded.
I can bet that the majority of people here on Lemmy have paid a handsome amount of money for their corporate-controlled smartphone, yet paying less than 3 bucks a month to sustain an independent internet is such an ordeal? I have no sympathy for these types.