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.
Donations are already happening in the Fediverse. Lemmy,world is funded by donations to the Mastodon.world instance. Many Mastodon users donate to their instance. I give $3 per month to my instance (sfba.social). They put out a quarterly report breaking down how much cam in and went out.
I donate in order to have an ad-free experience. If the admins separate the finances of Lemmy.world and Mastodon.world I will donate here as well.