If the reddit exodus happens and Lemmy gets even 2% of reddit’s daily active users, how will Lemmy sustain the increased traffic? I know donations are an option, but I don’t think long term donations will be sustainable. Most users will never donate.
I know the goal of Lemmy isn’t to make money, but I know that servers and storage costs add up quickly. Not to mention the development costs.
I would love to hear the plans for how to offset those costs in the future?
People do seem to donate sufficiently on the Fediverse. Of course the vast majority doesn’t, but if one person donates 10€/month, that pays for hundreds if not thousands of users.
The entire cost structure is also different when you get a lot of volunteer labour and don’t have to repay venture capital funders 3000% of their initial investment or so.