I’m fairly new and don’t 100% understand it yet, but instances are run on servers that require money. Are we heading towards seeing ads or subscriptions to raise funds instead of relying on donations to cover overhead?
Especially with the influx of new users. Hardware upgrades are needed.
Hmm. In the old days, pretty much every ISP ran a Usenet server. The cost was covered as part of your internet connection bill, it was just part of the service.
I could see a potential future where running a Lemmy instance became table-stakes for ISPs, like Usenet used to be.
This would run counter to the principle that lemmy should remain detached from corporate control, though. Especially considering most places (in the US anyway) live under ISP monopoly. Comcast/NBC would end up owning like 40% of lemmy.
I predict corporate interests trying to run their own lemmy, branding it as something else, extending it to include features they don’t push back to the upstream projects, then federating with other instances to maximize the amount of user data that can be collected.
That would mean losing your Lemmy account when switching ISP, no thanks.
remembering passwords or storing them
I hope the f not. Let’s keep ISPs greasy hands away from the cool stuff please.