Who pays for your servers and static ip.

Not op, but I pay for my own server, domain and IP (though it is not a static one). And I've donated to some of the fediverse platforms that I use, like lemmy.world.
I'm not sure what you are trying to get at?

Just random people with their own money. Basic webhosting is cheaper than a netflix subscription.

So what's your public facing site address and we'll see how we'll it can hold against the onslaught on the net. You gonna pay to host all the YouTube videos too. Do you host instances for thousands of others to mess with. What SaaS offerings does your site present. If you're not sure what my point is you're not informed enough to present a legitimate argument.

You gonna pay to host all the YouTube videos too.

We already pay for this through the time theft and involuntary brainwashing known as "ads". It's a very dumb and wasteful way to pay for a shitty product. But that's capitalism as usual.

What SaaS offerings does your site present.

lol. The internet doesn't run on marketing buzzwords. Grow up.

AI as a technology at its core is fine, what is at issue here is the unnecessary scaling up of AI. There were great strides being made in making models as small and efficient as possible before OpenAI fucked up the entire market by becoming a for-profit company. They literally can't scale the models much further no matter how much data and compute they throw at them nowadays, and the money faucet still hasn't been turned off to disastrous consequences.

fyi, the way you write seems like you are upset over something. It's somewhat odd to write that on a website that is hosted by volunteers on a shoestring budget for thousands of users "against the onslaught on the net." So you better understand, anything besides youtube videos (i.e., the majority of the content on the net) is fairly economical to host. Of course it depends on the system, but a small group can easily stand up something dynamic like a lemmy instance, and an individual can host their static blog for basically free -open to the wide internet. Youtube is hard because video uses an incredible amount of bandwidth. Google looses money on it, despite it being plastered with advertising. So even capitalism hasn't figured out how to do it yet without being subsidized by another revenue stream.

The premise of a web business model is that websites must make a profit - either directly or indirectly.

That's utter bullshit. Some of us are old enough to remember when the web (or for that matter, the pre-web internet) was there for sharing of information, social interaction, and community. Schools, the government, and nonprofits provided hosting for free.

Later on, ISPs started to add hosting as part of their internet service - along with usenet access and an email address. The cost to them was negligible, especially vs. the benefits of being able to say "switch to us and create your own website!"

Nowadays you can run a site from your home PC in a VM, punch a hole through your firewall, and pay a modicum for DDNS to a custom domain for under a hundred bucks a year. If you're a bigger site with more traffic, maybe you spin it up on AWS and pay ten or twenty bucks a month.

The very idea that "The Web" is a homogeneous, for-profit entity is a profound and fundamental mistake that is made by every money-obsessed organization around - not just the financial rags like Forbes and The Economist, but essentially corporations as well. Take a look at the support site for your favourite product and try to convince yourself that they didn't just put the minimum required effort in to send customers into the arms of their competitors.

If you’re not sure what my point is you’re not informed enough to present a legitimate argument.

Or maybe you didn't present your point clearly.

Or maybe you're just wrong.

These are entirely possible scenarios you might want to consider.

I'm a bit baffled by his hostile response. All I said is that I host and pay for my own server.
Nowhere did I claim that I host YouTube videos on that server, or that it is open to the public. I host that server for personal use, and for me and a few friends of mine. At most there is going to be two people connecting to it at once.

I have looked into hosting a peertube instance, but I've not really gotten around to figuring out how to set that all up.

I never heard of an ISP offering a free website to host, the free mail address I do remember sadly.

A lot of what is wrong with the web is the result of governments lacking the ability to stop companies from growing too much. It doesn't help either that the best country for startups is as corrupt as fuck and has been for decades, including from before the start of the internet.

We all should chose to use parts of the web we want to use, like Lemmy and actual non-profit organisations like Ecosia, Proton and what not.