Like probably most reading this headline in light of why many of us are here in the first place, I cringed at the headline. That being said it's something we must consider. These sites are not magic, they are on physical servers consuming resources to persist. Upkeep of some kind is necessary.

Is the solution a commercial business one? Maybe in some cases. The author themselves acknowledges that this is how the problem we're fleeing began in the first place, but this doesn't necessarily have to be so. Considering the nature of business which I am all too familiar with, involving commercial influence has a much higher potential to corrupt good intentions than we may want to believe however careful we are. There do exist small businesses who place their work above profit (I'd like to think my business included among these) and can be run putting the interests of people first. It can be frustrating to watch less ethical and more exploitative peers zoom past and leverage their resources to get more business even though their service can't compare, but people are not rational actors unless they have been primed to be. Perception is reality in many cases.

I have heard some discussion to make this instance into a non-profit, which could also be a solution. I also recall working for a non-profit who had to depend on laundering the reputation of massive corporations for chump change because that was the only dependable source of revenue. This isn't to say that a non-profit is inherently a bad idea, only that they have their own challenges and are uniquely vulnerable due to having to always re-invest profit and not necessarily being prepared for fluctuations in capital as a consequence. It's a unique set of challenges.

Optimally I would like to see the instances I interact with to be run ideologically by a corps of contrubutors committed to social responsibility and positive freedom as it appears Beehaw is run now. I really like how this instance is run and the values it has demonstrated. I'll most likely be around to discuss when changes need to be made, because the world changes and we have to change with it unavoidably.