I started this lemmy instance to ensure that pirates, anarchists and neurodivergents would find a friendly port in the storm of enshittification engulfing the internet right now.
Reddit (and Digg before it) has always been my favorite way to interact on the web, secondary only to Google Reader (RIP). Likewise, I moved away from Digg when it started shooting its foot with gusto and now it's time to do the same for Reddit. This instance ensures I won't have to move again!
I however didn't expect the amount of people who would follow me, so in the past 2 weeks since I've opened this instance, I've had to upgrade twice to keep up with the demand, and hopefully this latest one should last us a while.
This means that my cost planning is way off. I had to buy into a professional SMTP service, get a dedicated box, etc. All this is starting to become a significant personal cost I need to cover. I said before that I'm not in this to make money, I just have a particular set of skills and ideologies which allow me to both run a lemmy instance and also make it friendly to the particular people who need it as their base jump into the fediverse.
So I plan to follow the same playbook as I mentioned before. I just want to cover the infrastructure costs of running and maintaining this instance and the rest is going to go to Lemmy development itself, to help make the software even better and prevent any accusations of profiteering.
The link of this post goes to the Ko-fi goal I've set up. Once this goal is bypassed, any overflow will be sent to the lemmy development once a new goal is opened for the next period. Or if you prefer, just send to them directly when you see the goal being full.
I am very happy for everyone who decided to follow me on this journey and very excited at the quality of people joining and interacting with this community. Your application answers are a delight, so keep on amusing us admins with your creativity and keep posting the awesome stuff you do!
One last thing, Lemmy is not my main project (but significantly eating into it). If you're into Generative AI and want to share your idle GPU compute, do check out the AI Horde; the only crowdsourced cluster for Generative AI!
Always remember: Sharing is Caring!
This is not at all a request to do so if you're uncomfortable, but do you think that you might disclose running-costs and donation income publicly? I believe you, but it might be nice to see the red-line and where we're heading growth-wise. What projected hardware costs may become as you expand. Obviously much of that is private and it's entirely up to you.
You can always visit the donations page to see funding progress. It's currently sitting on 47% of the fundraising goal to see us through until the end of the year. Thanks everyone for your support.
That's the fundraising goal, not the actual cost of running the infrastructure.
He's entirely within his rights to not share those details. Even if his goal has a profit/expansion overhead, he's more than earned it imo.
I would also appreciate this in the name of transparency. Though, like you said, this is their instance and they owe me nothing. It’d be nice though.