Having said that, is it really the end of the world if large Lemmy instances have ads to make up for any shortfall in donations? Otherwise, how are large instances expected to be sustainable long term, especially if they’re going to ever reach the kinds of traffic Reddit sees?
No advertisements. Period. Donations should be enough, especially if instances remain small like they are intended to. The federated internet is not about becoming reddit, which many people misunderstand. It’s supposed to be something different, and one of the keys to that difference is avoiding corporate interests driving the site. Advertisements kill that instantly. If you want ads, go use meta shit.
@newtraditionalists
Keep in mind that with the way the ActivityPub protocol was designed, more small instances end up taking up more resources and are more costly to run overall than larger ones.
Resource requirements scale with number of instances, not number of users.
@spiritedpause