i'm not sure how any of this is supposed to work or if as a user i am supposed to care.
i've budgeted next month to pay the maintainer of the thingy that i am thingy-ing and hopefully on a monthly basis. but is the end game for users to run their own instances ?
It's the same as hosting your own email server. Yes it's "best practice" to host your own, but there's updates, bug workarounds, certificates, etc etc that makes it easier to use someone else's server. In the end it's a personal choice.
Or use multiple accounts on different instances that represent your different interests. Like maybe you have a "news & shitposting" account, and another "programming and piracy" one, etc. And ensure each account is on an instance that supports the necessary federations to support that.
That's a pretty common mindset amongst small instance runners I think, including the one I'm on. Only caveat, this instance doesn't allow NSFW posting (viewing is fine), and has a pretty vague ban policy lmao
None yet. When I came here I had been away from reddit for about seven months looking for a place to put poems and homer stuff. Really this conversation has informed me onto what exactly is going on here in the fedvee.
i don't use reddit/facebook/twitter/insta/toktik/et cetera. I am just looking for a mostly texty experience without me having to run an instance of anything with mild socializing on other instances.
As for how much I have to a "give" part of my monthly budget that last month was a give to the food bank. it revolves around the food bank, one of the three local homeless shelters, the local animal companion welfare places and then generally in August I buy myself a LEGO set for when the rain starts instead of giving because I can be a selfish fuck.
i have added this to the "give" part of my budget with a note to do it for sure right after an upgrade or major outage because my instance admin will prolly want some love after that.
that is my current strategy for not wearing out instance welcome.
It doesn't have to be a either/or. I am just saying: If you are looking for a place to write, maybe a blogging platform would be more suitable than a link sharing/discussion platform?