If you get rid of open registration instances and start charging, you'll immediately lose huge amounts of users back to Reddit or whatever alternative is free to them. The echo chamber will be even more pronounced, and whatever success Lemmy/Mbin/Piefed have had will dry up.

Most people don't want to self host. And most people aren't willing to pay. So you have an issue in front of you. Do you actually want users and interactions? Or do you just want a place where very dedicated nerds can crow to each other about whatever self-hosting tricks they pulled off while occasionally backed by an addicted whale (who, upon noting the monotony and small userbase, will probably move on quickly)?

Everything, especially digital things, is backed by a small group of whales supporting everyone else. It's a mix between addiction and community-building instincts. Right now, said whales are the server hosts and a handful of users. Because of the desire to lead a community, and the addiction of social media, it keeps going. You say it isn't sustainable. I say it's a cycle. The specific instances don't matter until it becomes a corporate situation. All that matters is that there's at least one instance with enough people active to provide the gratification to the whale.

[–] rglullis 1 points 2 days ago

If you get rid of open registration instances and start charging, you'll immediately lose huge amounts of users

That is not necessarily true. you can have for example just a bunch of people that like to self host and they will invite their friend. This will be just a small constellation of smaller instances and they don't have to be completely open registration.

Most people don't want to self host.

You don't need most. If 1% of the people can show initiative to self host and serve 100 people, it should be enough.

Everything, especially digital things, is backed by a small group of whales supporting everyone else.

Bad economics and bad incentives. What you are describing is not just a natural law that can be avoided, but it is part of the reason that we are in this mess.

Software has this amazing property of being virtually free to copy. But the things that we do it and the labor that is required of us still has a cost. We need to bring back some sense of human scale to digital platforms, and the only way to do it is by letting us set a limit to the size of the organizations.