Discussion
One of the problems with the fediverse(s) is that there are in fact cash costs to compute share, and we can't wave it away with VC and ad revenue. There's no economy of scale and complete self-hosting costs hundreds/month even if your admin&mod team is volunteers.
Which is why I'm really keen to see Canadian-built SMEs like https://GoFedi.com joining https://FediHost.co offering pocket-change-coffee-money price points for managed hosts!
they do the sysops, you manage your instance.
This is a good reason for peer to peer technology. Spreading the work and cost around among many people
@johannab so the solution is... to centralize? 🤔
The solution is scaling to viability, not scaling to shareholder returns.
The whole point of my shouting out two (and I may have found 2-3 more) as-Canadian-as-possible-under-the-circumstances, down-to-the-metal hosting solutions is that none of these should become central, but there is room for individual viability of nodes in a network.
Much of the federated social web still exists on DO, AWS, and Azure. And sleeves-rolled-up gruntwork in IT is invisible.
@joykill Thus, the vast majority of somewhere betweeen 10-15 million users perceive that access to the social web is "free as in I don't have to contribute", when the real point of "Free" software has always been "free as in freedom".
That extends to services.
My ultimate utopian preference is a global, universal basic income, but I won't live to see it. Until then grassroots collectivism and scaling to purpose is what's going to maintain an armada when a supercarrier will sink.
@johannab I like this, too, but I'm wary that one of them will get Too Big and turn more commercial; others won't be able to compete as they'll lack economies of scale; and it'll be Github or Gmail (both near-monopolists in a federated system) all over again. Decentralisation is key - so we can't get complacent and lose it!
@johannab FediHost.com can be bought as a domain?
@joramulmke @johannab Autocorrect may have got in the way https://fedihost.co/
My other realms of interest intersect with grassroots community orgs that are not at all tech hobbyists, but who need communications and organizing spaces online, and are already overburdened with a social expectation that they do multiple full-time-jobs for zero wage.
There is an entire social ecosystem that has no idea how the power stays on, who nonetheless depend on ultra-low-cost technical services and need reliability. SO IMPORTANT to have players offering this.
@johannab Grassroots movements need grassroots responsibilities. That means, in the same way people pay some cloud prescriptions of big tech, they should feel the responsibility to tip the hosting services to keep hosting instances running.
@gpiperagkas Yep. We have between 10-15million (or maybe more, nobody can keep a daily count) users, the vast majority of whom don't pay a cent for the power they consume in their participation.
I don't believe mandatory cash-for-access is universally viable *either* because there remain vast gaps in equity under that model. but if 75% of MAU were chipping in $1/month , hell that would be $3000/month for one of our smaller instances, which could then pay for fractional admin and local hosting.
@johannab I did not refer to mandatory cash-for-access, but once in a while I am happy to donate to services that I use, those which give me the opportunity to use freely. It is an act of politeness also.
A space for Bonfire maintainers and contributors to communicate
