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by colesantiago·3d ago·view on hn ↗
> Yes it does. Hobbyists are willing to spend their own money, hence their blog doesn't need ads.

Until it is unsustainable which is the majority of cases due to no funding.

> Wikipedia is donation supported.

The majority of websites are not as big as Wikipedia, let alone having donations in the tens of millions.

The GP talks about Mastodon which hobbyists run and users sign up to instances to have their social identity on.

toot.community, mastodon.cloud and many others are closing down this month due to no funding.

And even some organisations don't want to run instances due to it being expensive. (1.)

Even mozilla.social shut down.

Sure, these services wouldn't run ads, but they can't charge users either which leaves donations as the only way to fund it, and 9.9/10 times it doesn't work.

Using Wikipedia as an example to prove a point about donations makes no sense for everyone else who also contribute to the open web for free.

1. https://gfsc.community/why-we-discontinued-our-mastodon-serv...

1 comments
> 9.9/10 times it doesn't work

I'll concede that it doesn't work out a lot of the time. This is not very different from for-profit websites. Also, your number of 9.9/10 is probably pulled out of your ass. I'm note sure what the real number is, but I'd wager it's lower than 9.9/10.

I'm not sure how old you are, but in the early 2000s there were so many community forums; most of them survived. Even if it doesn't, the community can go to another host at some point.

This isn't the counterargument you think it is.

Yes, 9.9/10 times it doesn't work.

For every Wikipedia or Thunderbird that gets millions in donations you get thousands of others that cannot live off sparse donations alone.

And since you are lazy to read the article:

"After three years of running our Fediverse server, we're shutting it down. Not because we've given up on the Fediverse, but because it isn't safe or sustainable enough for a community org like ours to run a server on a shoestring...

...Since 2024, all of our core funding and funding bids have fallen away. The server dwindled to three active users, and the operating costs and effort of keeping it maintained were no longer worth it for our economy of scale. It was a bigger cost, and more effort, than the rest of our hosting put together."

This is one of many examples of hobbyist / community run instances of what you describe, as donations didn't even work for them and they shut down.

Remember, they cannot do ads or subscriptions, so donations are their only way to be sustainable.

> I'm not sure how old you are, but in the early 2000s...

Spare us your fallacious "back in the old days" argument, we aren't there anymore, we are talking about now.