The Future of NormalCity.life

Hello, regular users and passers-by,

NormalCity.life first came online some three months ago as a response to the Reddit protests that were taking place at that time. I wasn't really sure whether or not NCL would be a success, but I thought it would be worth the risk. We've had our ups and downs, especially with several initial configuration headaches and issues with spam accounts. We're still here, though, and plan to be online at least until the end of this year. That's really what I want to talk about, though, as server costs are still steadily increasing.

I host NCL in the cloud because it's faster and more secure than a honkey-tonk network configuration here at home. Of course, that comes with a cost. Initially, it was palatable for the small user base we had at that point. Now, for whatever combination of reasons, we've maxed out our storage again. If you noticed issues with the site today, that was the reason. I had to upgrade the plan to a higher tier, which means it costs more to run NCL month-to-month. Now, it's not astronomical ($28-30 per month), but it's quickly getting to the point where I cannot support it long-term without some help. This server is run in the interest of those who use it and without the sale of user data or profit-seeking activities. So here's what the future of NCL looks like:

• NCL will pledge to keep its servers online until January 1st, 2024. After that date, if it is unsustainable to operate the server, a two-week notice will be given to users via a post in this community. An additional post will contain as much information as I can reasonably provide to help with account migration and user data management. Users will have the opportunity to request user data; however, certain types of data retrieval may be unfeasible (remember that this is a one-man operation on the backend, after all). After that period, assuming the server is still unsustainable to operate, the server will be taken offline, and all user data will be permanently deleted. NCL promises to never sell or otherwise directly profit from your data. We will only make copies of your data as requested by you via the email associated with your account. We will only offer data retrieval before or during the two-week window; after the sunset period elapses, all data will be unretrievable.

• If you would like to help fund this server, a recurring donation to our tip jar would greatly help in offsetting the costs of operating NormalCity.life. If we can reach a more sustainable month-to-month operating cost by the end of the year, NCL will continue to operate as usual. I hate to set a deadline for something like this, but I have a lot of personal costs that I have to balance with the operating costs of this server. I can reasonably promise three or four more months, but if costs keep increasing due to resource usage like they are, that is all. A recurring donation, even $1-5 per month, would make a big difference, and one or two of those donations would likely put us in a place where we can continue to operate into 2024.

I don't like making posts like this, but I wanted to formalize this in writing so you all know what to expect. I've been thinking about the cost of operating NCL long-term for some time now, and this recent issue reminded me to make this post. I've been pretty happy with Lemmy overall, if only for the constant supply of Star Trek memes at [email protected]e. This is my main account, and this server is my main way of accessing Lemmy. When I said a while ago that this was my ideal Lemmy instance, I wasn't mincing words. I've run it to treat others the way I want to be treated on a social media platform, and I hope that's still obvious, especially now. Your support is appreciated, and I sincerely hope that we can move forward together in a more sustainable fashion.

All the best,

EuphoricPenguin

Send all requests, suggestions, and concerns to: [email protected]

EDIT: I'll add this at the bottom here, but we've moved to registration applications until further notice. I'll do my best to let people in, but this is better than letting spammers slip through without a care in the world. I'm periodically trying to get NCL updated to the more recent version of Lemmy, but I've hit a few snags with the Ansible install. In any case, we're proceeding with the above plans unless the funding situation improves for this instance.