How will mastodon servers manage the current influx of users over time? Do enough users donate, or will instances charge their users at some point? Are there any advertisement driven instances? Which instances have the most realistic business model?
I was pondering how this is going to fly after further growth, with increasing expenses, when maintenance becomes a chore, and as life happens to instance admins. #mastodon #twitter
@kefir Instances can limit their amount of users to ensure they don't need bigger machines to be able to keep up with the influx.
Some instances stick to 5k users, some to 100k. I don't know what we stick at but so far we still have capacity.
@trinsec yeah, but if there's 100 million users on mastodon one day, that's going to be a lot of servers and admins. There will be many busted disks and forgotten bills every year without some organisation to handle. I predict some unstable services and orphaned instances as the fun wears off and admins get busy with other stuff.
@kefir It happens, nothing new. I've had my time on a dying instance too (hardware failure, nothing was recovered) and simply moved on. For most people it's just social media, you shouldn't base your life on it.
For organizations, companies, etc, they're best off hosting their own server instead with their own domain, and where only their employees can have an account.
