On the Fireside Fedi interview with Jerry ( the admin of Infosec.Exchange Mastodon instance ) a scary truth was suddenly revealed ( on 34:11 ): Just to keep the instance up and running he needs to spend up to $5000 a month, pretty much out of his pocket. Donations to the instance barely cover any of that. And if he will ask people to pay to use it, they will, rightfully so, switch to a different instance.
It sounds like you’re thinking there is no way to compete with Reddit. If you charge, people will use Reddit. If you have ads, people will use Reddit. People are only here because there aren’t ads and it’s free?
That’s basically correct, yes. I don’t see the fediverse platform(s) as being “special” compared to others. Sure, there’s political and social momentum that keeps people here, especially due to anticorporate causes. People are here because they got ticked about the Reddit API changes, the ads, and the monetization (Reddit Gold, etc).
If any of those things change, people will see that they’re not getting the value they were looking for, and will go back.