As many users seek alternatives to X, rival social network Mastodon says that its official app downloads are up 47% on iOS.
Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko says downloads on Android are also up 17%, while total monthly sign-ups rose approximately 27% to 90,000.
The open-source X rival functions much like its competitor, the site formerly known as Twitter, on the outside. However, unlike the centralized Twitter, Mastodon consists of thousands of different social networks, which are integrated into a web it calls the “fediverse.”
a) it’s not significant amounts, it’s quite cheap, per user, to run lemmy, e.g. lemm.ee is one of the bigger instances and costs 200 Euro a month, b) tipping 20% on a bill that doesn’t even include any service is not the same as donating to a service you like. This is more like a patreon which doesn’t lock anything for non-donating users.
storage requirements will only increase (attachments, linked website images), unless you are regularly deleting content and so contributing to link rot
lemm.ee currently even proxies links to external images, sunaurus identified some issues with it, storage wasn’t one of them. Storage requirements are going to look quite differently if you’re lemmynsfw.com but it’s not particularly hard to get enough donations to afford a couple extra TB a month. Much, much cheaper than paying admins an actual wage where I think the actual scaling pain will be.