Seems that there was already a thread with suggestions for reducing bandwidth cost. Anons being anons quickly stopped being on point and went for shit-flinging approach, but it does sound like a nice way to go. Although it strikes me like a temporary fix if they'll keep growing. I wonder what's "too expensive" for a billionaire per month. Maybe I don't have enough respect for money, but this just sounds wrong coming from a person who has enough cash to spend a million dollars per week for the next forty years. Just, pre-emptively, please consider to not give me a lecture on that one. I know how fucking lucky I am for getting more than a minimum wage for keeping good grades, you don't need to explain fiscal responsibility and 'real world expenses' to me. Above was motivated by curiosity and not intended to be read as "bah, why can't he just donate 100k per month? what an asshole, right!?".billionaire Minecraft founder Marcus "Notch" Persson apparently also expressed an interest in helping the site, writing: "Assuming it's not too expensive, and assuming I don't have to do any actual work myself, I'm in."
Whoa now, touchy! I think bfv has the right of it - That's Notch saying "I really don't give much of a shit, I'm willing to give 'not much of a shit' money to this." I mean, let's say you have a billion dollars and you just love watches. A hundred thousand dollar watch sounds like a great indulgence! Let's get two so that it will match both your brown and black shoes! But let's say you have a billion dollars and hate having something on your wrist. A hundred thousand dollar watch is a hundred thousand times as stupid as a one dollar watch and a one dollar watch is "too expensive" considering you don't want it in the first place.
Ach, OK. Thanks to both you and bfv. Sorry, I don't know why it didn't occur to me. :/ Sorry :P. I had a meeting with a person from university finances regarding my scholarships and being absolutely sincere: never before I had such an overwhelming urge to just slap someone. Almost two hours went to waste because 'due to my peculiar situation and age' I had to talk to a woman that was trying to explain to me what's this weird new thing called 'money'. Sorry for whining but aside of her talking to me like I'm autistic, she simply could not believe that she talks to eighteen year old student who has: - savings accounts (one is even so well thought out that I can't get my money in any way other than personally going to the bank… which I hate and hence can save money :D); - additional medical insurance; - already prepared most of the documents regarding my registered tutor income, paid research internship and summer job at the bookstore for tax evaluation; - plans for choosing a rate-fitted retirement fund within next few months; instead of, I don't know, spending my scholarship on drugs and booze?Whoa now, touchy!
When it came out that moot was passing data to the FBI and creating honeypots, most of the netsec people I know moved to infinitechan. /v/ is a constant shitshow, in the way that makes me understand why people watch reality TV. The problem with splintering the chan boards is that we, those of us who like using the internet, don't want chan culture to jump out of its containment and crap all over everything else online. The advantage of having 1-2 chan style boards is that the people who enjoy that style of online interaction will STAY there as that is where the critical mass is. I'd rather have the internet's ID, as you so eloquently put it, contained. The tough part is that these people are the 1%'ers of internet users who understand security, adblocking, etc. Great if you want conversations and shitposting, not so great if you want to run an ad-supported media site. There are currently three main chan boards, and in order of size (roughly) they are: 2chan is the Japanese originator, and I don't speak or read Japanese so I don't go there. 4Chan is basically high school edgelords, reddit's /r/fatpeoplehate monsters, and Something Awful clowns. Due to the massive holdout of the Goons, 4Chan IMO still has the reach and power it once did to be the first with memes, image macros, Internet Culture, etc. InfiniteChan (or 8Chan) is basically the gamergate people, the netsec folks who noped out of moot's bullshit, the animie weebs who got booted off when moot was dating a gawker reporter, the lefty-leaning people (like me) who got KKK'ed off 4Chan's /pol/ boards, and the "alt-right" reddit people who got sick of reddit. The two English chan boards each have a charm and culture that is interesting once you get off the scab of distaste and intentionally offensive material used to keep out the "normies" as they call everyone else on the internet. You parents are not going to go on a chan board, after all. Just make sure to use noscript, adblocker etc because every once in a while someone will dump a java bomb in a thread for the lol's.
Tangential, but I imagine that one could make a community that cost something like $200k per year for membership, just as a way to ensure that every member was filthy rich. Basically, an exclusive country club for the internet. You could even donate most of the proceeds to charity. Not saying this would be a good thing to do, but it might actually be a sustainable web community.