I’m not really clear on the way the networking works with federated systems.
Say that an instance decided to charge a subscription fee, would they then have to defederate from free instances on a cost basis alone? To handle server load for requests from those instances?
Or, say that subscription was sustainable, would there be anything stopping someone from making a free instance to give users full access to that subscription-based content? The answer there is defederation right?
Trying to work out in my head how this system could be scalable without communities becoming walled gardens and thus removing part of the appeal of federation.