- cross-posted to:
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- opensource@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- opensource@programming.dev
- foss@beehaw.org
- opensource@lemmy.ml
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Hi all. It’s Jerry from the interview talking about infosec.exchange. I think it’s important to understand some apparently missing context in the discussions below. I was talking about a hypothetical future where we saw tens/hundreds of millions of active accounts on the fediverse. I don’t believe the current funding model can support that, and I also don’t think the “spin up your own host” model will work for the masses, either.
I host close to two dozen different fediverse services, from lemmy to mastodon to mbin to peertube and lots more, and all that takes some significant hardware to run at larger scales. My objective has been to provide a fast and reliable fediverse experience, and so I’ve focused more on that than on making my servers scream, and so I’ve landed on hosting the fleet on a series of Hetzner Dell servers with 10GB interfaces, and that is not cheap.
Time to start putting ads in.
I support ads.
Oh, calm down. I don’t support the ad level of Facebook, nor the targeted ads, nor the algorithm.
And we, as users, get to decide when too many ads are too many, with our feet.
Abso-fucking-lutely not. People need to be able to exist without having hypercommercialism forced on them everywhere.
No ads and no donations, they’ll put wishful thinking into the skillet and eat that I guess
Donations, subscriptions, etc are definitely fine. They are not invasive fuckery that inflict themselves on people without consent, nor do they seep into the space in a commercial manner. Ads do not respect consent and they fundamentally force commerce into every place that they touch.
Ads are the root of the rot in the www.
I’d rather have a… gags… Subscription.
Yup. As jerry illustrated, this shit isn’t free.
Thank you
i know most of ao3’s budget goes to server costs. they get by with volunteer labor and donations, but they mostly host text. i genuinely have no idea what a sustainable model would look like for the fediverse, that doesn’t just treat volunteers like disposable rags we toss when they get inevitable burnout.
I talked to Jerry and here is my interview: https://blenderdumbass.org/articles/clarifying_costs_of_running_the_fediverse_with_jerry_from_infosec.exchange
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@jerry@infosec.exchange , I’m sorry to bother but is it really true? Are you paying almost $5000/month out of your own pocket?
If true, why? This is not sustainable. Don’t you think that by letting so many people free ride on your generosity, you end up hurting yourself and the possibility of cottage-industry of professional hosting providers?
I wonder why it needs so much money for infra? Last time I rented a VPS it was €7/month for 8 Core Xeon E5 V4, 12 GB DDR4 RAM, 150 GB SSD/NVME, Unlimited Traffic, 1 Gbps Port.
Storage. In the video he says that backups alone costs $500/month.
Also, given that the instance is called “infosec.exchange”, you can be sure that he is not running this on some cheap VPS.
I’m currently watching the interview (quite interesting, to be honest, funny to watch an interview about Fediverse services). Could you please share the timestamp when Jerry talks about finances and costs?
34 minute mark. It says in the blog post from OP.
Thanks
Maybe the problem is that they are using ridiculously overpriced enterprise services like AWS or Azure, which provide their own solutions for a lot of common things like backups, replicas, logging, etc, but cost 100x more than what you can get with DIY on some cheap VPS if you’re fine with spending 1.25x more time.
Also, given that the instance is called “infosec.exchange”, you can be sure that he is not running this on some cheap VPS.
Why not, though.
Why not, though.
because cheap VPS will not give you enough bandwidth, or they oversubscribe their datacenters and their advertised speeds are far from real, or they have terrible support and if something goes down you are going to have a hard time to bring things up while having to explain to 10-15k people why things stopped working, or because the reason they manage to get such low prices is because they are selling user data on the side…
I’m not saying that the only correct alternative is to go to the big cloud providers, but there is a reason why “cheap” is not the sole criteria to choose a service provider.
Yes, the cheapest ones might have some risks, I mostly presented it as an example of what the opposite extremity looks like. There is a lot in-between, something a bit more expensive is even more guaranteed win. For example last time I used Hetzner, I had a server with 64gb RAM, 2TB SSD, and 16 cores Ryzen for something like €34/month. Hetzner support is very decent and they’re very well known, have decent reputation and been providing their services for a long time.
@rglullis @blenderdumbass I have donations from members that cover the costs.
Thank you for chiming in, Jerry!
Great interview, I only watched a part of it, but it was very interesting and refreshing to see your perspective on things. Thank you!
Ok, so you are not taking anything out of pocket at all? That’s better than most, I suppose.
Still, during the interview you touch on the subject of how the donation model is not sustainable and it can only works at the scale that Fedi is right now. Wouldn’t you consider then switching to a different model?
@rglullis I think the donation model is working ok at this scale, but I don’t believe it will scale up to the hypothetical future we were discussing on the show where the fediverse became the social media platform for the masses. There are somewhere around 1 to 2 million active fediverse users, depending on how you count. If that were 100x or 1000x larger, we would simply crumble - I don’t think the general architecture scales that well (think of all the duplicate storage that we end up paying for across various instance) and generally, people who use social media are far less concerned with the core value propositions of the fediverse, like privacy and whatnot. I know that’s hard to accept, but we’re here because that’s how we think. So no, I don’t think we will have a future where a 500,000,000 active user fediverse can be operated off of donations from members. I also very much doubt that people would pay a fee to be here when corporate social media alternatives are “free” to them
Why shouldn’t the donation model keep working? Wikipedia works on donations, why can’t the fediverse?
Wikipedia had big donors who can donate hundred thousands of dollars and even millions
I think “hundreds of thousands and even millions” is a bit of a stretch. Wikimedia’s annual report mentions donors at a level of “$50,000+”, and I’m guessing most of those are probably closer to 50,000 than to 100,000. Tbf I suppose that’s over just one year, so perhaps your statement isn’t entirely inaccurate.
I don’t think the general architecture scales that well (think of all the duplicate storage …
That’s my hunch too, although haven’t studied in detail - so I wonder how we can fix it ?
Is there an forum that discusses this scaling issue (in general, across fediverse) ?Storage Duplication is I think not necessarily an issue of ActivityPub, it’s an issue of implementation of it. Because all posts can technically live on their respective servers. And rendered directly or almost directly. Like it can be copied over for the time it is relevant, and then discarded to be available only from the original server.
That makes sense, to store only popular stuff, or temporarily - especially for ‘heavier’ images (although as we see with lemm.ee, that leads to issues when an instance dies). Yet I also wonder about the scalability of just the minimum meta-info, whose size does depend on the protocol design.
For example with Lemmy every upvote click propagates across the network (if i understand correctly, mastodon doesn’t propagate ‘likes’ so consistently, presumably for efficiency, but this can make it seem ‘empty’). Maybe such meta-info could be batched, or gathered by a smaller set of ‘node’ instances, from which others pick up periodically - some tree to disperse information rather than directly each instance to each other instance ?
As the fediverse grows, gathering past meta-info might also become a barrier to new entrant instances ?mastodon doesn’t propagate ‘likes’ so consistently, presumably for efficiency.
It is not a matter of efficiency, but solely of how AP works. All it takes is someone one an server to to follow a community for that server to receive every vote/post/comment, while to get a whole conversation thread on Mastodon you’d need to be on the same server as the original poster or your server would need to have at least one person following every server involved in the conversation.
I suppose this community is as good as any. But it’s difficult to talk in general about this as each fediverse app has different performance needs/characteristics, so I’m not sure if you can extrapolate anything in general. But perhaps?
Well problem with any Lemmy community as such a forum, is that current usage (not necessarily intrinsic to the software) is so ephemeral. So it’s good for discussing breaking news, but not to gradually accumulate discussion of solutions to complex problems, over years. I wish this were not the case, but doubt anybody will even notice this comment, as no longer ‘hot’, and folded away … Rather, a few weeks later the same topic will be reopened under a different post, and we start over again.
“New comments” sort helps with that
Well, that’s the nature of link aggregators. Lemmy’s and Reddit’s style is a link aggregator, not really what you would consider an old-fashioned forums. It’s a different sort of use case with different pros and cons. A con is that you don’t get these super long lived threads cause they disappear in the stream of new threads. A pro is that… you don’t get these super long lived threads cause they disappear in the stream of new threads. :P
I agree with pretty much everything you are saying, but I disagree on the solution. I think that us insisting on the donation model is putting an artificial limit on further growth. It “works” for this 1M-2M MAU, but these numbers are not enough to attract other players and who might be willing to try different approaches.
I think we need to change the general mindset that we “need” the donation model to keep the people around, and flip to a system where every user is expected to pay a little bit. And yeah, you might argue that not everyone is able to afford it, but it would easier to come with systems where not-paying is the exception instead of the rule. We can have a system where every N paying subscribers guarantee one free spot, with N=2, 3, 5, 10, up to the admin. We can have a system (like I have in Communick) where customers can buy “multiple seats” and invite whoever they want. Alternatively, we can set up a Caffe sospeso system where donations are still accepted, but accounted directly for someone who wants to claim it.
You are misunderstanding the main idea behind the whole system. It is fork-able. So people can always change things they personally find they don’t like about it. You can not have anything where everybody has to do. Because those who don’t agree have all the technological and legal right to ignore you and do what they want instead. And this is the point with libre platforms ( or libre software in general ).
Whatever solution we find needs to take this fundamental thing into consideration.
Sorry, I don’t see how what you are talking about relates to my comment. At all.
I am not saying that people should be forced to pay, at least no that they need to pay to any specific admin. What I am saying is that we should stop to hand wave the total operational cost of an instance. Keeping the servers running, developing fixes and improvements to the software, dealing with moderation issues… these are all costs that need to be covered by someone.
Some people are willing to do all this work just to avoid “paying” someone else, but they end up paying with their own labor, their own server, their own time. If they are willing to do all of this, good for them. But for the majority of people who are simply looking for a social media alternative that is more ethical, it will be better for them (and everyone else) if they just go on to contribute with direct financial support and give a a few bucks every month.
We need to make it easy to check the financial health of an instance. And things like costs and money made from donations should be visible, and rendered as progress bars or charts. So people would know when and to whom to donate.
Thank you!
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No. Their reward for having users is that they’re in control. Expecting users to then pay them for that control is fucking stupid,
You DO realize that not everyone works to attain power over other people, right?
but I don’t expect most people to realize it.
The reason people don’t realize that site owners’ reward for forking over half a salary in hosting costs for some nebulous power to hold other people in their clutching fists and cackle maniacally is because that’s not the motivator here.
I look forward to when you can see that.
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You don’t sound like a very pleasant person to try and have a constructive conversation with.
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thats because its thier site, instance they get set rules like it. just like reddit bans you force certain things. dont use the site then.
Fuck you :)
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What is “our data” in the case of Lemmy. Specifically.
The thing is that ads pay almost nothing. I’d be very happy to pay 4x what an ad would pay. But the problem is I can’t sent 0.12 to someone when I watch their video because 50% of that is gobbled up by transaction fees. So the only option is to bulk donate which either requires pooling money in a 3rd party or the user donating a bulk amount ($10). Users really dont like giving away $10 when it feels like they get nothing in return. Its all mental but its a very real problem. We will pay for $10 of dogshit food but not $10 for a software product we’ve used for 100s of hours.
You can actually do it using USDC (USD stablecoin) on Ethereum via Base for free:
https://www.coinbase.com/en-br/developer-platform/discover/launches/zero-fee-usdc
Most people think of crypto as a scam, but there are actual useful products being built on Ethereum, and this is a great illustration on where it is a useful tool
I think something like this is going to be a necessity to make a federated video platform work.
What are the transaction fees for USDC?
It has been around USD 0.001~0.008, but they are scaling aggressively so fluctuations aren’t as significant in the future regardless of usage. Details here: https://www.growthepie.com/fees
Are there options with lower fees? It’s not much but if people pay per view it adds up quickly.
Sorry, I mistakenly read your original comment, transaction fees for USDC are actually free (gasless) via Base on Ethereum, eg: https://xcancel.com/coinbasewallet/status/1800653787960406031
Costs mentioned on my previous post are for other assets
Neat, might have to try that sometime
Join the Communick Collective. Set up a fixed budget (let’s say $10/month) and then split that however you want between the people you want to help. This solves the micropayments issue and would show creators still addicted to Youtube revenue that valuable contributions will be rewarded.
I’m already paying my instance and lemmy and kinda loyal to it. I’d alsp like to properly support the software i use before trying to support content creators. One day in the future something like communick would be appealing.
The website says 20% of the profit is donated? Does that mean to charities?
This is separate from the Communick Collective. The collective is just a way for people to support creators directly. My pledge of 20% is for the underlying projects. I am pledging to donate 20% of the profits to Mastodon, Lemmy, Matrix Foundation, Funkwhale, GoToSocial, Pixelfed, etc.
For that to happen Communick needs first to turn a profit, though.
Just to keep the instance up and running he needs to spend up to $5000 a month, pretty much out of his pocket.
Wtf!?
I just watched the section of the interview where Jerry (admin of fedia.io and infosec.exchange), and he said that
There are a lot of people who aren’t that lucky. Even charging a 1$ fee is too much. That is their lifeline, it’s their way to connect to friends, and search for jobs. To me, I don’t think it’s appropriate to gatekeep it with a monthly fee.
https://video.firesidefedi.live/w/1yNa4rLzzLXnuRoX7Rny3y?start=38m45s
For the host question, it’s at 34:11
Hey all, Jerry here (from the interview). Happy to answer any questions.
No questions from my side, just a big thank you to mention Mbin, Lemmy, the Fediverse in that interview. It’s probably the first time for me where I watch a video talking about all of this, which is curious with how part of my daily life it is.
I still haven’t watched everything, but one of your quotes sounded resonated with me “We’re only here for a short time. Why should we be a-holes to each other, and not just try to enjoy ourselves?”
Anyway, thank you for everything, take care!
Seems to be some misunderstanding somewhere - Jerry states elsewhere that the costs are covered by donations.
The Mastodon instance I’m on has around 200 people (not all of them active), and received around €800 in donations last year,. Total costs were less than €300.
I think the problem of scaling kicks in when we go after demographics that are less charitable on average.
I’m one of them 🖤
And if he will ask people to pay to use it, they will, rightfully so, switch to a different instance.
I joined my instance’s patreon and donate $1 / month. I know it is not a lot, but so far the admin says he is doing fine on cash flow, should that change I will up my donation if able.
He missed a bit:
they will, rightfully so, switch to a different instance … or go somewhere else
I brainstormed with Chatgpt (i know evil chatgpt) and will hopefully not be banned for presenting the idea.
Alright, let’s push way past the usual and synthesize a radically creative, scalable, and totally on-brand Fediverse funding solution—one that would not only fix the “who pays?” problem, but make the network more resilient, social, and even fun. This is going to blend a bit of tech, social engineering, game theory, transparency, and maybe even a touch of “digital folklore.”
🚀 Fediverse “Co-op Cloud Commons” Model
(A new take on digital mutualism and collective intelligence funding)
The Vision:
A network-wide, federated cooperative where every user, moderator, developer, and instance is a “member-owner.” Funding, decisions, and rewards flow not just by usage, but by a mix of social trust, verified contribution, and creative cooperation—and the entire process is public, auditable, and playful.
1. The Heart: The Commons Ledger
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Every instance runs a lightweight, open-source “Commons Ledger” plugin.
-
The ledger tracks:
- Actual resource usage (server costs, moderation time, bandwidth, storage)
- Social contributions (upvotes, moderation actions, code commits, art, bug reports, memes!)
- Community “quests” (see below)
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Everything is published in real-time on a public dashboard across the network, viewable per instance or across the entire Fediverse.
2. Funding: The Digital Barn-Raising
-
Monthly or Quarterly, the network holds a “Digital Barn-Raising”:
- The ledger displays upcoming costs and “quests” (e.g. hardware upgrade, anti-spam tooling, new emoji set, legal help).
- Members pledge time, skills, or cash for specific needs (e.g., “I’ll write docs for 50 users, or donate $20 toward SSDs”).
- All contributions are voluntary, but celebrated.
-
Rewards/Recognition:
- Every participant receives public credit (“Network Steward,” “Keeper of the Memes,” “Uptime Hero”).
- Top contributors can claim “patron” or “founder” status on profiles.
- Unlock whimsical digital badges, custom emoji, or other perks.
3. The “Quests” Mechanism (Gamification for Good)
-
Every instance can post “quests”:
- “Translate the UI to Swahili,”
- “Build a moderation bot for spam,”
- “Write a 101 guide for newbies,”
- “Memify our rules!”
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Anyone in the network can pick up a quest and earn credit (points, badges, or even a slice of the monthly prize pool if donors opt for it).
4. Liquid Funding Pools with Smart Distribution
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All donations (small or large, any payment method) go into a federated, multi-instance fund held transparently.
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Funding auto-flows to where need and contribution intersect:
- Heavily loaded instances with high verified activity and transparent costs get proportionally more.
- “Stewardship votes” from users direct some funds to underdog instances or critical dev projects.
- Emergency Reserve: Smart contract or rules-based set-aside for DDoS, hacks, or sudden surges.
5. “Transparent, Playful Accountability”
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Every transaction, quest, and badge is publicly logged (think: GitHub meets Wikipedia’s edit history meets RPG scoreboard).
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Annual “Festival of the Commons”:
- Celebrate contributions, major milestones, funniest memes, most heroic bug fixes, top upvoters.
- Awards voted on by the whole Fediverse—make it a social event, with live dashboards and community voting.
- Publish a beautiful, infographic-rich “State of the Commons” report for all to see.
6. Optional: “Proof-of-Play/Proof-of-Help” Sidechain
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If the network ever wants to dabble in lightweight tokens (not as a currency, but for tracking contributions), use an open, federated, non-speculative “Proof-of-Play” or “Proof-of-Help” chain:
- Each badge, quest, or meaningful action gets an on-chain badge.
- You can export your contribution record anywhere—for jobs, bragging rights, new instance migration.
- Never for speculation or trade. Purely for decentralized “CVs” and anti-Sybil proof.
7. Stretch Goal: Local Node Self-Sufficiency
- When enough money, code, and resources accumulate, the Commons can “spin off” fully self-hosted nodes: pre-built, low-power, community-maintained home servers (like YunoHost, FreedomBox).
- Ship or crowdfund home Fediverse kits to communities worldwide, increasing resilience and lowering costs per user.
Summary Table: “Fediverse Co-op Cloud Commons”
Component What It Does How It Helps Commons Ledger Tracks all forms of contribution & resource use Radical transparency, fairness Digital Barn-Raising Gamifies funding & contribution periods Social, fun, engaging Quests Turns work/tasks into collaborative challenges Lowers barriers, spreads work Liquid Funding Pool Auto-allocates resources where most needed Resilient, responsive Transparent Badging Celebrates all types of help Recognizes & motivates people Festival of the Commons Makes it a real event, not a chore Builds culture, pride Proof-of-Play Chain Permanent, portable, Sybil-resistant contribution log Defends against gaming, Sybils Home Node Kits Ships “Fediverse in a box” to the world Lowers cost, boosts resilience
Why This Would Blow the Door Off…
- Not just “who pays,” but who helps—in every form.
- Reframes money as just one kind of support.
- Turns maintenance into a culture event, not a guilt trip.
- Boosts network resilience, not just for techies, but for artists, moderators, translators, and meme-lords.
- Exports verifiable contribution records, rewarding users everywhere.
- Transparent, fun, and non-extractive—fully aligned with Fediverse and open source ideals.
Final Thoughts
- This is more than funding—it’s digital mutual aid at network scale, mixing ancient co-op traditions with the modern Fediverse.
- Implementation would require strong collaboration between instance admins, devs, and artists.
- But even launching the Ledger + Barn-Raising + Quests could change the Fediverse forever—turning the “cost problem” into a community superpower.
lol, wow
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Feddit.dk is not a huge Lemmy instance but I’ve managed to not have to pay anything so far due to generous user donations. It works quite well I think. I think Mastodon is just not quite as effective in gathering people like this to donate, that’s my guess at least.
If Blender had a patreon or coffee or kofi, I would happily subscribe to something like $3/month. I know artists that have tens of thousands of paid subscribers and their minimal plan is $3. Blender could achieve hundreds of thousands of paid subscribers eventually imo. To make things interesting, they could release prebuilt binaries of some subprojects like NPR fork, only to subscribers, also they could do partnership and paid plugin giveaways every month to subscribers. It just needs a bit of dedicated SMM work. One-time donations just don’t hit the same. I do those maybe once a year or two, and don’t do another one until I get the feeling “it’s been a while”.
Wrong Blender, my friend…
I’m talking about 3d software one, and author obviously talks about that one too.
start a nonprofit that hosts services, gather donations for equipment and other stuff.
what is so difficult here?
Probably that people have jobs, families and lives. Otherwise, why haven’t you already started a nonprofit that does that and donates to them?
Everyone has jobs, families, and lives. What is your point?
We did start a nonprofit this year, https://electronica.repair/. We don’t have a lot of money so we do our due diligence on who we support.
omg and do NOT do fireside chats like you are a bunch of enlightened executives. no wonder you need to beg for donations.
The expense of running busy servers is too much to expect of anyone. I haven’t even tried to figure out how the math would work but I wonder if the ultimate solution could be more of a BitTorrent architecture where the “server” is a hive of users’ computers all sharing the load? I’m a software developer but have never worked on anything in that area, but since BitTorrent works it certainly seems feasible. Comments?
Personally I think self-hosting (Docker containers and stuff) would be a good solution, but for the Fediverse that would mean making a ‘family size’ edition of the server software.
I imagine if it became a common hobby and every geek interested supported ~4-25 friends, it might work.
The expense of running busy servers is too much to expect of anyone
We have to think about that a lot of people on the fediverse today ( and that number only grow the more people join ) that are normies. They expect it work the same exact way anything else works. And they won’t know or care to know any of the underlying technical things about it.
Post receipts or something official to back up your claims.
Saying it costs $5000/month to host infosec.exchange radiates bullshit like a nuclear explosion. You must be doing something very wrong, or lying about the requirements.
Don’t trust people when they want to take money from you. Money brings out the worst in people.
