@crashposition G’morning :)

@reneestephen Happy to hear it, Renée, welcome! :)

@reneestephen @aral hello!

@slokocki @reneestephen Hello 👋 🤓

@msadmin Oh my goodness, please tell me you’re a parody instance :)

@nielsa Hey, welcome back! And that’s great to here. It really have come a long way in the five or so years since I joined :)

@aral having a blast this time around 😁

@Fedg Hello! 👋🤓

@paulopinto That would be the one, yes :)

@neilbutler Hey Neil, welcome to the fediverse.

If you get a chance, please do set up your bio and make an introductory post so people know who you are and can follow you :)

@shauncbryant Welcome :)

Do try and set up your bio and make an introductory post so folks can find you.

@EAUnbound @aral

Just learned that my server is powered by solar energy. They keep the lights on by keeping the light on.

@EAUnbound @aral

And it was April 1st when it was posted.

I feel like a mix between optimistic and naive.

@EAUnbound Hey Geoff, you’re very welcome (and welcome to the fediverse!) :)

The admins mostly (entirely?) keep the lights on via donations. Some, I guess, might have the means to keep a server running for the common good.

Best thing to do would be to ask publicly. I’ll boost your post and hopefully the right folks will reply :)

@EAUnbound @aral like this: https://joinmastodon.org/sponsors. I'm donating $20 a month, for example.

@isagalaev @EAUnbound Although that supports Mastodon development in general (and really sad to see casino links, etc., there, btw. @Gargron) – which is great. But the way to support instance maintainers is to support them directly.

@aral @EAUnbound @Gargron I assumed it was the same thing for mastodon.social

@isagalaev @aral @EAUnbound You assumed correct. mastodon.social and mastodon.online are run by the Mastodon gGmbH non-profit, which also develops the software.

@isagalaev @aral this is exactly what I was looking for! Thanks!

@EAUnbound yeah, it's rather hidden. In the Web UI, in the default mode, there's a tiny "About this server" link on the left.

@EAUnbound
Donations seem to be most common, but our instance is run by a university computer club, so the only "costs" are volunteer sysadmin time and no need for donations to keep it running.
@aral

@EAUnbound @aral I guess most instances are on expense of the owner and some have donations, while many other just hope for donation. But having own instance worth every penny

@EAUnbound @aral My instance runs on an ARM SBC (Pine64 Pro, I think?) I had lying around collecting dust, and a static IP from my ISP only costs me $5 a month. Small instances may have such low running costs that I'm sure plenty of folks, such as myself, just run them as a hobby.

@ryan @EAUnbound How many accounts are you able to run on that smoothly? (Asking for a friend.) :)

@aral @EAUnbound Wish I could tell you. Haven't had any of the friends or family I invited bite yet. So for now, it's just me here.

@ryan @aral it’s super cool that you’re running your own server! This is why I really like open source software, as it feel more inclusive and allows anyone to be a part of the community.

@EAUnbound I’ve seen a bunch who use things like Patreon to allow community members to contribute to monthly costs, and I’ve also seen small servers like my own survive on a single financial backing which is usually just the Admin putting up the cost.

Personally I’m a big fan of crowdsourced funding for Instances.

I hope this helps even just a little bit.

@EAUnbound @aral The admin of my instance has a patreon account, and I support them there. Go to the home page of your instance and look around.

@EAUnbound @aral mastodon.social has a patreon. You can support for as low as $1 a month.