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.
If anyone puts ads on an instance it’s not really a good encouragement for someone to join, and what with the nature of the fediverse it’s more likely to make people try finding a better deal elsewhere.
I would definitely move to a different instance if my instance started using ads to fund itself - I’d rather the instance mandated a subscription than doing that.
That said if it got so unsustainable that I had to pay a subscription I would probably consider moving to a smaller instance anyway or hosting one myself for myself.