I’m fairly new and don’t 100% understand it yet, but instances are run on servers that require money. Are we heading towards seeing ads or subscriptions to raise funds instead of relying on donations to cover overhead?
Especially with the influx of new users. Hardware upgrades are needed.
I’m not opposed to operators trying to make money, if some server brings some feature that I find valuable, I won’t begrudge them trying to make money off it. I think the hopeful thing with federation is that when one feels that an individual server is being abusive or doesn’t like their monetization approach or is unhappy for some other reason they have the choice to go elsewhere. Competition is good.