I'm curious, how much does it cost you, monthly, on average, to participate in the fediverse?
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Stefan Bohacekreplied to Alien_Sunset last edited by [email protected]
@Alien_Sunset I'm really happy that we're able to, as a community, split the costs and share resources to keep the various servers and services running!
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This poll about how much the fediverse costs you, in particular, is interesting:
Stefan Bohacek (@[email protected])
I'm curious, how much does it cost you, monthly, on average, to participate in the fediverse? Including voluntary donations to your server admins, fediverse apps and other software, your own server, etc. Any money you spend directly towards keeping the fediverse going. #fediverse #poll [ ] It's completely free! [ ] Less than $5 [ ] $5-10 [ ] $11-50 [ ] $51-100 [ ] $100+ [ ] $1,000+
Stefan's Personal Mastodon Server (stefanbohacek.online)
My server costs *me* nothing in dollars but a lot in labour. Other people paid this year's hardware, hosting and power bills, but I provide moderation, debugging and childcare that keeps things moving.
I think a nontrivial amount of unpaid labour goes into a lot of servers. But if I wasn't doing this I'd be supporting my friends on this server in other ways!
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@stefan The Well online community offers email, private discussion forums and a mastodon server for $15 a month. We turn 40 next year.
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@mazz Huge milestone, congratulations!
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P [email protected] shared this topic
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@terri Thank you for sharing!
Yes, I should've included options for non-monetary costs/contributions as well. The poll was mainly intended as a response to the news about X increasing their subscription price, so that's kind of the general context.
Stefan Bohacek (@[email protected])
Inspired, of course, by the news about X raising the cost of their Premium Plus subscription by 40%, and some of the responses claiming that the fediverse is free. I wish! https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/23/24327918/x-premium-plus-subscription-price-increases https://stefanbohacek.com/blog/the-ways-we-keep-the-fediverse-sustainable/ #fediverse #SocialMedia #sustainability
Stefan's Personal Mastodon Server (stefanbohacek.online)
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J [email protected] shared this topic
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M [email protected] shared this topic
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LinuxUserGD :godot:replied to Stefan Bohacek last edited by
@stefan
"Some of the responses claiming that the fediverse is free. I wish!"Instance owner doesn't accept donations afaik
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Stefan Bohacekreplied to LinuxUserGD :godot: last edited by
@HugeGameArtGD Yeah, I've seen a few answers like this, interesting!
I suppose it's a good thing when an admin is that confident in the server's longevity. And it's an opportunity to support some other server, perhaps one where your friends are, instead!
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Ah, I could've sworn I set this to run for three days. Still, good sample size, and great insights. Thanks to everyone who shared this and contributed!
I did a short write-up on my blog:
Stefan Bohacek (@[email protected])
Can't believe this site is (almost, for some of us) free! https://stefanbohacek.com/blog/how-much-does-the-fediverse-cost/ #fediverse #SocialMedia
Stefan's Personal Mastodon Server (stefanbohacek.online)
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@stefan My instance is run democratically on co-operative principles. The membership is about $12 per year, though many of us voluntarily contribute more than that. I do, and it's still less than $5 per month. And as I understand, we're running well within our budget.
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@foolishowl Very nice!
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Snooze Button Connoisseurreplied to Stefan Bohacek last edited by
@stefan
It would be cool if you can repeat the poll on a regular basis, perhaps twice per year to see the trends -
Stefan Bohacekreplied to Snooze Button Connoisseur last edited by
@bayport Good idea!
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@stefan I think I'm in the $5 bracket.
I have use a subdomain of a domain I already use for things.
I run the actual application on a laptop I use to watch media on at home.. so it would be on anyway.
I just keep a tiny EC2 VM to proxy requests back to the home laptop and have a static public IP.
I reckon this quite minimal
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@kat Interesting setup!
Seeing a few people run their server from home, pretty cool!
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The Nexus of Privacyreplied to Stefan Bohacek last edited by [email protected]
@stefan interesting results, thanks for doing this! With roughly 1,000,000 active users in fedi today, if these numbers are representative (a big if of ourse but still interesting), then it projects to a total of $5,000,000 or more per month -- not counting labor or corporate funding.
EDIT: corrected original estimate, which was too low -- see the reply!
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Stefan Bohacekreplied to The Nexus of Privacy last edited by
@thenexusofprivacy Who needs VC money!
Thank you for doing the math!
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@thenexusofprivacy
Back in the day, when running social apps took real design effort, a sizeable developer team, and lots of dedicated hardware in addition to moderation, Habbo could edge along profitability at about €1 per active user per month (it was about €9/mo per 11% paying users) at less than an order of magnitude more users.. Those numbers are now 15y old.
@stefan -
The Nexus of Privacyreplied to The Nexus of Privacy last edited by [email protected]
Whoops when I run the numbers it's more than my original estimate!
@stefan whoops case you want to check it:
~ 250K * $2 each = $500K ($1-5 category)
~ 200K * $5 = $1M
~ 100K * 10 = $1M
~ 20K * $50 = $1M
~ 20K * $100 = $2Mso that's $5.5M !
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Stefan Bohacekreplied to The Nexus of Privacy last edited by
@thenexusofprivacy Nice!
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A great data point. My guess is that fedi's server costs are much higher than commercial competitors -- both because decentralization means a lot of duplicated hardware and disk storage, and also because Mastodon's a resource hog. On the other hand almost all moderation and admin is done by volunteers ... and a chunk of the development work is also ither funded by NLnet or done by volunteers.
