It depends, actually. If relay is big enough, the bandwidth and storage can be a problem. Well run relay is expensive to run, nothing is free, especially people’s time. 🐶🐾🫡
Discussion
Yes, the time it takes to try to combat impossible spam is I think a far larger cost than the server cost. There is also, many times when someone just 'throws money at' the problem (in the form of paying for more servers) in order not to spend the time optimizing the service. In a startup when hours are scarce and money is not, this is a legit way to run. For nostr, I think it's an unsustainable way to go though.
Agree. And also think that the current duplicate all events to all relays thing is a huge problem down the line. 🐶🐾🫡