RE: https://mastodon.online/@mastodonmigration/116122826580868296

Once again, this is only *if* you want to provide a service to 40+ million users. You probably don't want to do that as an individual.

Running a social network is expensive no matter what you do, when you reach a certain scale. In 2024, it cost mastodon €84,000 to operate their servers. In the same period, it cost Hachyderm approximately $20,000 to run.

There's no magic bullet for "social at scale being cheap" besides a tonne of engineering (which in itself is expensive af).

The fediverse largely relies on volunteers to operate infrastructure that is critical to many people's experience on here. It relies on donations to operate, and very frequent admins struggle to meet their expenses, requiring essentially donation begs.