+1 again to what Mancy said. I just pay for the convenience. But yeah, if it’s not cumbersome for you to manage your own server then that’s great too!
As for the cost, oof I can’t even imagine. Besides, they have to make use of CDN services and what-not just so that the experience is consistent worldwide.
But then again, the server that I’m a part of has like 100 people paying every month, and this network is a consolidation of many such servers, so I think the costs and labor get distributed.
Lemmy is a part of the fediverse.
The OP has a kbin account, which is something akin to Lemmy. But they can comment here because both kbin and lemmy are a part of the fediverse and therefore are interoperable.
But within lemmy itself, you can also have accounts on different instances too! E.g. my account is on lemm.ee, while yours is on lemmy.world. Both servers are a part of Lemmy, but act separately, and are interoperable!
Think of it like email.
Kbin is like gmail.com, lemmy is like outlook.com. Users on gmail can send and receive emails from outlook, and vice versa.
Now think of lemm.ee as outlook.co.uk, and lemmy.world as outlook.co.ca.
I hope this clarifies stuff a bit!