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?
Instances could maybe put up a Patreon with features such as voting to decide things related to the instance for example. There's plenty of ways to make money without VC.
Another idea could be making a bot that only works for people who donated, I don't know...
I've always dreamed of, and now with even more Fediverse usage it might be easier to push, to have local municipal governments fund simple sites in the states as part of a pretty standard practice of creating community spaces, and so that local governments can have a site to host accounts without the chance of being censored by big tech in the future.
I empathize with this view - but I doubt this will ever happen. Ignoring the user training bits, and the legal bits (who is a mod, how do they do stuff), you need to have someone dedicated to fighting this though the IT/Security gauntlet. Now keep in mind im private sector (so it's slightly different) - but we in IT generally have dimm views of hosting WebApps.
All that said. Once one local gov does it the potential for it to spread radically increases.