Why some features are paid

We are small, independent, we have never taken any funding, and we do not sell ads or track users activity. Operating a service is expensive. As a result, we need to be cautious of the features we add to the website and how they affect our costs.

Every feature ranging from larger images, longer posts, video support, to even editing, costs us more money than standard usage. Posts are stored in databases that are expensive and mostly live in RAM, and the price of RAM has skyrocketed.

Edits: Editing a conversation/comment does a lot. First the old content is fetched and stored on disk as post history, and then the content is re-scanned for things such as link changes. This also deletes all search index data for the current content, and adds a new search entry every single item in the newer content. Afterwards, the system checks for all users who have interacted with the item and alerts them that an edit has been made to it. This can take thousands of database calls and can be used to abuse our services. Relegating this feature to PRO accounts helps us cover the costs of the server and helps prevent the feature from being abused.

Videos: Media like high quality images and video not only cost to store, but have an ongoing monthly cost to keep stored; a single video that is 100MB costs us $0.048 per year. So if we had only 100 videos posted that would cost $4.80 per year excluding bandwidth. But if we stay open for a decade, that now costs almost $50 just for 100 videos. For context, 20 million videos are uploaded to YouTube daily. If each user uploaded just 1 video at current count (60k) our cost would be $240 per month in storage alone.

What we do not do

Other services have clear ways of making money from users without charging them, and some charge for services while having ads, selling user activity, and monetizing your usage. We don't do that. We don't do any of the following at all, and this is how almost all other networks make money.

• Selling ad placement.
• Paid reach. (charging business to reach existing users who follow them)
• Paid APIs. (selling access to developer features)
• Creator revenue sharing. (taking a cut off all income creators make on a platform)

The only way we cover costs

PRO is the only way we cover costs and keep the lights on. That might not be the answer everyone wants, and we do get comments thinking all features should be free, but in reality we would not be able to operate that way. At the time this was last edited, September 2026, we don't even come close to covering development costs we have spent improving and running the service.