Comment on [Instance] Kbin.run down
rglullis@communick.news 5 weeks agoWe could have a constellation of smaller service providers, like we do for email nowadays. Everyone talks about Gmail+Outlook having 80% of the market, but we all forget that the tail still exists and that is made of hundreds of independent companies which make a healthy living charging $20-$50/year.
MimicJar@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
And what’s stopping that from happening now?
I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that servers die because they are difficult to maintain. This is perhaps especially true for kbin/mbin based servers.
I suppose for enough money some might be willing to maintain, but I’m not sure it’s that simple.
rglullis@communick.news 5 weeks ago
Mostly, culture. Everyone hates ads and corporate controlled networks, but almost no one wants to pay for a commercial service provider. People say that donations is an acceptable alternative, but no one pays enough for admins and developers to a living out of this.
I can tell you that if if that I had 10000 paying customers for my commercial offering ($29/year for Lemmy, Mastodon, Matrix and Funkwhale), I’d be able to pay myself a good salary, support the developers (I pledge 20% of Communick’s profits to the devs) and hire a couple more people to help me. It is not a lot, and a lot less than Facebook extracts from each user by exploring user data.
Elevator7009sAlt@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I do not blame people for this, but that’s because as much as people hate ads and corporate controlled networks, they hate parting with their money more, and corporate-controlled, ad-ridden social media is free.
rglullis@communick.news 5 weeks ago
“Skin in the Game” is a powerful filter. If people are not willing to put their money where their outrage is, then their opinions and desires will be completely disregarded.
I can bet that the majority of people here on Lemmy have paid a handsome amount of money for their corporate-controlled smartphone, yet paying less than 3 bucks a month is such an ordeal? I have no sympathy for these types.