Lemm.ee didn’t shut down because it was financially unsustainable though. It shut down because the admin team didn’t want to do it anymore.
Plenty of people have offered to take lemm.ee on and AFAIK nothing has progressed, but handled in a different way there could have been continuity and no need for users to transition away.
Given that the issue wasn’t one of finance and rather one of effort/will, how does charging for access change anything? The owner could decide they have had enough, walk away, and shut everything down anyway, no?
I have kind of a background knowledge, but did exactly that and have almost finished Lower Decks. It is the first ST thing i’ve watched for years, and yeah there are some references but overall I think you’d really enjoy it without knowing about the full history.
About to start of Strange New Worlds :)