Having said that, is it really the end of the world if large Lemmy instances have ads to make up for any shortfall in donations? Otherwise, how are large instances expected to be sustainable long term, especially if they’re going to ever reach the kinds of traffic Reddit sees?
You are not supposed to have large instances. This is a self inflicted problem. The entire point of federated is to have many small instances and share the load.
Lemmy.world decided to accept more than 100k users. Ok fine, but the rest of the instances don’t have this problem whatsoever. We actually want more users on our instances.
And I knew this would happen. I was watching it grow and I knew eventually it would be a question about how to finance it, and I knew users would talk as if it’s a problem for Lemmy itself. It’s not, it’s a problem for Lemmy.world.
I mean sure, if it’s possible to only have ads for Lemmy.world users… Then go ahead and watch your ads. But I don’t think the rest of the instances want that experience.