I prefer good faith discussions please. I love the Fediverse and love what it can be long term. The problem is that parts of the culture want nothing to do with financial aspect. Many are opposed to ads, memberships, sponsorships etc The “small instances” response does nothing to positively contribute to the conversation. There are already massive instances and not everyone wants to self host. People are concerned with larger companies coming to the Fedi but these beliefs will drive everyday users to those instances. People don’t like feeling disposable and when you hamstring admins who then ultimately shut down their instances that’s exactly how people end up feeling. There has to be an ethical way of going about this. So many people were too hard just to be told “too bad” “small instances” I don’t want to end up with a Fediverse ran by corporations because they can provide stability.
Before we revert to ads surly we try medals. Set a standard price on each. Then when a comment/post recieves such a thing divide that reward between user, user instance, post user, post instance, community, and community instace. That way servers, admins, and high quality content creators all have an incentive. It could theoreticaly be weigted however wanted. Only issue I see is it would need some sot of blockchain to ensure no fuckery goes on.