redditrefugee here
So, Lemmy.world is just one instance of lemmy… it maybe the biggest one, but its just one right? And it agrees to federate with other lemmy instances (like lemmy.ml)… got it. But at the end of the day, each instance is running on someones computer right? Whats the traffic like between these two? If I ran an instance, and federated with this site, what would that cost me? How much traffic does this instance produce?
Are we suppose to divide into our own instances to reduce costs, and then link them together through lemmy.world? wouldn’t that make it centralized? And then who is paying for THIS? How much is being a central hub between instances going to cost?
Sooner or later, we have to realize that these wonderful free things are usually a bubble that eventually pops when they have to start running ads.
Who is paying for this?
Yes, just one of the many.
Yes.
Yes. Big instances are run on server hosting services, it would be too much for just someone’s own computer at home, not the mention the risk of attacks that are better dealt with by hosting companies that have experience about it.
You can setup an instance on your own PC for learning/testing purposes if you wish, just don’t open it to public use unless you really know what you’re doing.
There are a couple of posts in which those things are discussed:
No. Being able to talk to each other doesn’t make it centralized.
Centralized is when you have all the data in a single place, like reddit. On lemmy things are spread out, so if a lemmy server dies the rest live on nonetheless.
Donations, there’s a link on the instance home page.
Alternatively host your own instance on a VPS like Linode. Costs me $20 a month for my box that runs a lot of tasks like Lemmy, Mastodon, matrix, and a couple smaller task. I split the cost with the 8 or so of us that use the service so it’s not too expensive