Are there any paid services for either Lemmy or Mastodon? Something where, given it is a subscription service, you would expect them to stick around long-term?
I wish they also had a Lemmy server. I’ve always liked Medium and have subscribed to them in the past. If they offered a lemmy servers as part of the whole package, that would be a big win for me. 
Not sure how tech savvy you are, but hosting your own server costs a few euros per month, you decide how long it stays up and you are chief in command.
Second this. And other instances would still be accessible. Even more so since lemmy.world (along with probably some others) is starting censorship, which wouldn’t affect you, since you decide what you can see.
I’d love to self host one for everyone but not allow communities. The idea would be that I federate with everyone no matter what and leave a what the user wants to sub to up to them. No censorship at all.
Not having communities would mean I don’t have to worry about what I host and have other instances defederate with me. Plus, I have no interest in being mod, dealing with DCMA,user reports, etc.
Would that allow someone to still post/upload on other communities? Honestly haven’t looked into this at all. Was going to in a couple weeks when I have time to actually sit down and test
When I finally look into it I’ll make sure to let you know. Are you going to selfhist yourself or just want to use it if I actually set it up? Maybe you can help me host it. Lol
If you let me know how to help you, then I’m in. I have a raspberry pi 4 and some external hard drives. That’s it. But I also have some money and would rather help you than host a lonely instance, Mr skankhunt
I’ll have to read about local laws and if I can get in trouble for what the users do/upload. I have no interest in dealing with legal shit… If I’m safe then I’ll have to see how much people charge for storage these days. I don’t really want to run it from my house and I don’t have a lot of disposable income to run it out in the internet somewhere.
If a user from your instance posts to a community and wants to upload a file, that file will be saved to your instance. Not the instance in which the community is. Keep that in mind.
Have you heard of what happened to Rammy? The admin went MIA, a bunch of trolls set up shop, and they (as expected) got defederated from the majority of the network for being an unmoderated trashfire. Or earlier incidents regarding a bunch of open registration instances getting bot sign ups even if those accounts never did anything (to the best of my knowledge anyway).
If you are going to host an instance open to public registrations you need moderation. Even if it’s just to keep the spammers and trolls at bay.
Your instance will be mirroring (essentially storing a copy of) content from instances it federates with. Depending on your local laws you might be held liable for this.
It sounds like I’ll also have to store any images my users upload. I’m all for free speech and being anonymous online so I’ll avoid logs and the like but I guess I’ll have to read Canadian law to see if I want to risk running an instance or not. I cant afford a lawyer, nor do I want to deal with anything that goes along with that.
Yeah, I may go with this option, but I really like the idea of helping create an economy. I suspect one of the Achilles heels of the Fediverse will be instances disappearing after users based their identity on a free server that the host eventually lost interest. Time will tell. I may be wrong. But also may be right.
I prefer paying for a service rather than donating. When you pay for something, there is an expectation of a service in return. I think the fediverse could benefit from creating an economy for this sort of thing.
I use free, donation and paid services happily. Not against any model.
I do not think paid services are as stable as you are imagining. Lots of paid services go dark all the time. Even major ones.
I think the most stable would be to either run your own or pay someone to run one for you on a VPS. And for community stability, donate to various servers.
For long term, government/nonprofit funding would be good to have I think.
I kind of feel the same way. When someone is offering service in exchange for pay, it signals that they’re serious about this and see it as a part time job at least, as opposed to someone just doing it as a hobby or just for a learning experience.
In my search I found 3 that offer multiple services for a single donation/subscription:
Neat.Computer - Their terms of service weren’t strong enough for me
Tromsite.com - I didn’t like their Peertube upload policy
Tchncs.de - The one I ended up joining.
I really wanted a smaller instance, but I just couldn’t find one that I was happy with.
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