redditrefugee here
So, Lemmy.world is just one instance of lemmy… it maybe the biggest one, but its just one right? And it agrees to federate with other lemmy instances (like lemmy.ml)… got it. But at the end of the day, each instance is running on someones computer right? Whats the traffic like between these two? If I ran an instance, and federated with this site, what would that cost me? How much traffic does this instance produce?
Are we suppose to divide into our own instances to reduce costs, and then link them together through lemmy.world? wouldn’t that make it centralized? And then who is paying for THIS? How much is being a central hub between instances going to cost?
Sooner or later, we have to realize that these wonderful free things are usually a bubble that eventually pops when they have to start running ads.
Who is paying for this?
The real answer is I don’t know.
I don’t think lemmy’s code has any space for ads. But its open source and anyone can change it. Anyone who runs an instance has full control over it, and i’m sure they could inject some ads somewhere.