While I agree that the free model is unsustainable, there are better ways than charging £10/mo for one social media site. A lot of people are struggling at the moment.
It's not. None of the donation-based instances are in the black, if you factor in the cost of the admins and moderators. Every other month there is a big Mastodon instance going offline because it became too big for its own sake, the admin couldn't handle anymore then shuts it down.
Much like any tech company, hardware and operational costs are a small fraction of the total expenses.
> if you factor in the cost of the admins and moderators
It is not possible to factor that “cost” in. They're volunteers: they're donating their time, and their time has no market value. Electricity, however, does.
> Every other month there is a big Mastodon instance going offline because
Every other month there is a big website going offline. A big social group disbanding. This is the normal way of things: human social structures don't endure like friendships do.
All of that is fine and good if we were talking about servers that were made for 100-200 people. This is not the case. When we are talking about servers that are house as many people as a large village, we are way past the realm of "community".
> human social structures don't endure like friendships do
IOW, the donation-based instances are not sustainable. If you want to have a service that you can rely on, you will need to resort to a professional service.
Nothing is indefinitely sustainable, and businesses are no exception. When the people involved don't want to do it any more, you have the same problem, whether it's volunteers volunteering, or professionals professionaling.
