#lemmy/#kbin has a problem that #mastodon hasn’t even attempted to solve; groups and what happens when they get popular.
#Communities, #groups, #magazines, whatever they are called are implemented as #Actors in #ActivityPub. They are basically just *very* popular users who boost a *lot*.
You can’t just distribute them across instances the way normal actors do. Whichever server hosts @technology@lemmy.ml or @technology@beehaw.org is going to get HOSED on the regular.
While this is true, 5 days ago lemmy.ml, the biggest instance, was on a 67 EUR server which is very small. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36270094
This is a scaling problem (having more users means you need more mods) but I disagree with how they handled it and it isn’t a money related thing. My thoughts on this are in an older post when this was first announced https://partizle.com/comment/64178
My initial idea is to use the something awful model of paying a one time fee to register an acount. The problem is that people would just sign up on another instance that doesn’t charge a fee but still add load to the lucky instance. Another approach could be to participate in communities on one of those lucky servers then you need to pay a one time fee to that server (comments would need to be removed by a bot if they’re not made by an approved user). I’m not saying that’s perfect, but it’s an idea. Adsense is another idea.