This seems unrealistic in my opinion. Normal people really don't like to donate, unfortunately. I think that Lemmy needs to make it so anyone can easily self host an instance without too much fuss. Something like docker on an old laptop. I know they have docker containers for Lemmy already, but in my opinion, they aren't simple enough to set up. And there should be an option to bundle it with a wireguard VPN tunnel, so that they really don't need to fuff about with reverse proxy to browse on your phone. This way, the cost is distributed across all users. It should be that setting up a domain and port forwarding should be the largest hurdle.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 5 points 4 hours ago

Normal people really don’t like to donate,

I'm on a medium-small instance; if %5 of users donate a dollar a month, the hardware would likely be paid for.

If lemmy.world had %0.01 of users paying, they could probably cover their hardware, storage and network fees.

If you're not paying the admin's mortgage, it not that hard to chip in. Unlike the other "options", no one is getting ad revenue or selling your data, if that's not worth a cup of cheap coffee a month for 1:20 people they have their priorities in the wrong places. .

[–] cabinet_sanchez@midwest.social 1 points 3 hours ago

I can tell you as a sample of one that everything you just said would scare me off

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 4 points 5 hours ago

Its not unrealistic. I don't think anyone expects 50% or 100% of users to donate. Also sites sustained off ads get less than a few cents per user. Donating literally anything puts you ahead of an ad supporting user. If Every lemmy user donated a dollar a year there would be 500k in rev to support the development. When the culture shifts from everything must be free to everyone giving a little to the services they use we can easily fund the costs of these platforms.

You can host an instance very easily on low spec hardware but its a lot harder than giving a small donation.

In the sims modding community people pay $5 for a dress and modders make over 100k a year. This is because sims players are happy to pay for things they find valuable.