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 am fully for this form of payment. Along with that, the instance can also have monthly donor/subscribers badge of some sorts. The hardware costs for maintaining an instance is not something astronomical like the Twitter/Reddit API (something like $500 per month for thousand+ active users). So just having like 50+ monthly subscribers should cover this.
Edit: My instance already has donations and the owner is quite happy with the setup.