> things actually do cost money to build and run. how much does HN cost to keep running, again? didn’t Stack Overflow notoriously run on hardware not that diff

> things actually do cost money to build and run. how much does HN cost to keep running, again? didn’t Stack Overflow notoriously run on hardware not that different from what some passionate devs keep in their home? the hardware is cheap enough that the BoM cost angle is debatable today and will only be less true over time. the other costs (time commitments) fall into well-known buckets: moderation, and development. Reddit, Discord, etc are already moderated by unpaid users. lots of open source development already happens without money or an expectation of any return on capital. you’re sort of implicitly denying that bbforums and such could ever be a dominant mode of online community, despite that at one point they were. if community aggregators (Reddit) is what displaced many of those independently-run forums, then today’s federation is something of an attempt to force that role back open and allow independently-run forums an even playfield.