[rglullis]

> I do not agree that just calling for moderators and volunteers means a business is unsustainable.

The problem is that example you gave (Wikipedia) is not a business.

> I don't know enough about Hachyderm to know for sure.

My point is not about Hachyderm in the particular. Like I said in the first comment, I think they have what it takes to continue operating and serving their community for the longer term.

My issue is with the overall ecosystem and the expectations of the people coming in from "traditional social media sites". If we want to provide an ethical alternative to Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp, we need to find a way to serve hundreds of millions of users. How are these people going to be spread around the instances? For context, we would need ~15000 Hachyderms to replace Twitter and ~60000 pixelfeds to replace Instagram. Are they all going to be dependent on volunteers? Are all these instances be operated by highly paid professionals from SV who can sink a few hundred dollars every month? Or are they going to go to appeal to "your donation is very important to us" and expect that a few generous souls make up for the free-riders? Or are they all going to eventually cave in, start treating it as a business and start charging from their users something that can pay actual salaries for everyone involved?