Reddit migrator here (shocking, I know)
Just wondering because I found out about all this yesterday and just realized the ammount of independent servers, but no sign of any ads or sponsors. So… is it all based on donations?
Also don’t just lurk, if you know you should answer because lemmy only counts users who posted or commented as active users.
Reddit the company has never been profitable either, it ran on VC investments for years. But more accurately, the real Reddit, the communities, never needed to be profitable because it was run out of passion for the subject matter of the subreddit. The former isn’t a problem for the fediverse because there isn’t an entity overseeing everything, the latter sorts itself out naturally as more motivated individuals join this community.