As a note to our new tumblr friends, the fediverse is a primarily volunteer-run thing with the admins paying for all the server costs out of their own pockets
If you'd like to chip in towards keeping the fediverse running then most admins have patreon or kofi links somewhere that you can throw a couple of bucks at from time to time
@troubleMoney honestly thinking we should add a built in "crowdfund this instance" solution; paid fediverse memberships where the instance admins can say "it costs this much to run the instances" and in order to signup, you pay a small share of that amount
@ThisIsMissEm I wouldn't be a massive fan of that, I prefer the sort of "hey, we've got this running, come join, maybe help if you want" vibe that's the norm at the moment but if an instance wants to go that way then that's fine
@troubleMoney yeah, but then no one actually regularly donates. I kinda like the ideas of the coop instance.
And sharing the cost between all members dynamically makes sense to me. The more people that chip in, the less it costs; if the total amount needed increases, everyone gets to either cap their max, or chip in more.
@ThisIsMissEm you might be surprised, with an admin that's approachable and a good community people generally try to chip in a bit when they can
@troubleMoney from experience of being a founding moderator for Switter, that's not entirely the case. Better to have a goal and to allow people to natively chip in, rather than have to use third-party platforms.
@troubleMoney this is great to know! Thanks for the community info! 🙌
@troubleMoney If I were to donate, should I only donate to admins of the instance I'm in? Or can I donate to admins of any instance?
@indianmidgetninja Each instance admin pays the bills for that particular instance, there's no shared fund
So if you're thinking of donating then I'd suggest donating to the instance you're using's admin because they're the one keeping the lights on where you are
Feel free to donate to other instance's admins as well of course, this isn't a competition and every instance helps the fediverse toot along
@troubleMoney I still have to set up ours. This post was a good reminder!