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.
Honestly, we really don’t know. mastondon.world and lemmy.world are run by donations and that’s worked so far. Ruud and his folks have been pretty upfront about their finances.
The general temperament I’ve gotten is people around here are opposed to a corporate like monetization. I agree with that. Usually, at least what I’ve observed, is that when a service monetizes it becomes enshitified.
We’ll find out eventually what happens.
Infosec.Exchange, Infosec.Pub, and Fedia.io (and all other Fedi projects run by Jerry) are funded by donations too. AFAIK, it is working well for the moment.
Would be pretty trivial to set it up as a non profit for anyone looking to seriously raise money but support community values.