TLDR - Why don’t Lemmy instances use methods like affiliate links to increase their funding?

I’m a relatively new Lemmy user (I created my account today.) and I noticed that some Lemmy instances are slower than others and that video and GIFs aren’t supported. To fix this, Lemmy instances would require more funding. I know that Lemmings don’t want instances placing ads in their feeds, but couldn’t they find other ways to receive extra funding? For example, the Pi-hole project has affiliate links on their site and they earn a bit of money every time you buy something through a link. Why can’t Lemmy instances do the same? Edit: I don’t mean ads and I hope they don’t follow us here. I mean on the funding page for an instance, they’d have affiliate links to things like Amazon so that they could get more funding. Not as a post either, like Pi-hole’s method.

  • Mountaineer@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Individual instance owners can do literally whatever they like.
    Put up ads.
    Charge a subscription.
    Anything.

    Let’s say instance A is hosting a community that everyone on instances B and C love to participate in.
    But A want’s to earn some money so they start charging access to their local users.
    This doesn’t effect users of B and C at all, because the data is federated.
    The owner of A get’s grumpy and defederates B and C.
    The users on B and C find somewhere else, either on one of their instances, or on D.

    Everybody wins.