I prefer good faith discussions please. I love the Fediverse and love what it can be long term. The problem is that parts of the culture want nothing to do with financial aspect. Many are opposed to ads, memberships, sponsorships etc The “small instances” response does nothing to positively contribute to the conversation. There are already massive instances and not everyone wants to self host. People are concerned with larger companies coming to the Fedi but these beliefs will drive everyday users to those instances. People don’t like feeling disposable and when you hamstring admins who then ultimately shut down their instances that’s exactly how people end up feeling. There has to be an ethical way of going about this. So many people were too hard just to be told “too bad” “small instances” I don’t want to end up with a Fediverse ran by corporations because they can provide stability.
The moderation could be the biggest part of wanting to just quit. Humans are pretty shitty creatures especially when anonymity is involved. This definitely has nothing to do with finances. It’s not expensive at all. If someone shut theirs down due to finances then their life was probably crumbling and that can happen to anyone. What is your question?
Mine’s relatively small and I haven’t had a single donation from the ~400 users.
Also if they did donate, less than a dollar each, the server would be paid for an entire year.