Re:DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon
by godelski on Wednesday March 21, 2018 @11:14AM
(#16638710)
I definitely don't think the current people running it are trying to be the next Zuckerberg. But you do have to have people working full time and pay for server costs, electricity, etc. A distributed system would be interesting, but is that what they are doing? At this point is it purely developers volunteering their time and money (along with donations)? I can't see donations supporting this type of thing at a larger scale.
I'm just wondering how they are getting the capital to scale.
Re:DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon
by Tassels on Wednesday March 21, 2018 @11:25AM
(#16638845)
It's decentralized. Larger instances are funded by patreon donations, while smaller ones are usually run by the folks that use the instance.
The decentralized nature helps the network scale.
And yeah, it's an open source project funded by donations. Plenty of those exist, and if it gets big enough, it'll get more contributors and donations.
Maybe they take donations, maybe you run your own instance and pay for the hosting. Not having shareholders that expect profits and growth probably takes a lot of the pressure off, too. All they have to do is not have burdensome costs or break even.