Due to the lack of economies of scale, they cost more per user than centralized alternative. Either we will have thousands of people who don’t mind footing the bill of the free riders, or we all will have to pay our share.
It’s true, thousands of cheap instances will add up, and probably to something bigger than what a server farm would have. Unless we start hosting something heavier than text extensively I expect the bill per user is still going to be tiny, though.
I think it’s definitely the first one. Very unlikely things have any reason to shift to an all paid model. Even still the cost of a single user is almost negligible. The cost to support thousands of those “free riders” is still probably on the order of dollars.
Community is enough. The Fediverse allows for small servers that do not cost a lot to run.
Due to the lack of economies of scale, they cost more per user than centralized alternative. Either we will have thousands of people who don’t mind footing the bill of the free riders, or we all will have to pay our share.
It’s true, thousands of cheap instances will add up, and probably to something bigger than what a server farm would have. Unless we start hosting something heavier than text extensively I expect the bill per user is still going to be tiny, though.
I think it’s definitely the first one. Very unlikely things have any reason to shift to an all paid model. Even still the cost of a single user is almost negligible. The cost to support thousands of those “free riders” is still probably on the order of dollars.