Reddit migrator here (shocking, I know)
Just wondering because I found out about all this yesterday and just realized the ammount of independent servers, but no sign of any ads or sponsors. So… is it all based on donations?
Also don’t just lurk, if you know you should answer because lemmy only counts users who posted or commented as active users.
I think it’s more than just “not for profit” - there was actual effort to make this platform as difficult to monetize as possible (probably as a lesson learned from Reddit lol). Let’s begin with the code - it’s under AGPL, which means you can’t set up a public Lemmy instance without making its code public. This prevents you from creating an improved version and keeping it to yourself to gain an advantage over other instances. Second, the fediverse means that it’s less likely for a single instance to become so big that it can unfederate itself without consequences, and while you’re federated you can’t really place ads - people would just view your community on another instance.
I don’t agree - while you could copy it, if an instance gathered a large user base and had some well-implemented quality of life features, there’s nothing stopping them from putting ads on it and I’d guess that most users would continue to use that instance. If it has quality content, they already have an account, and it has compelling improvements over other instances, I can’t imagine that some unobtrusive ads would bother people enough to go to a clone of that instance and create another account.
Sure, it could be done, and ad blockers are common enough, but I don’t think well-placed ads would cause some mass exodus. I’d even be okay with it if it’s in the name of paying the server bills for such an instance.