It probably goes against the philosophy or whatever of FOSS or Lemmy itself, but why not be a little evil so that you can actually sustain yourself? Donations can bring us far, but small non-intrusive ads can be a bliss in the skies for the people actually hosting the instance. Especially if there are millions of users uploading thousands of images and videos. This is extremely expensive.
Is running ads really that taboo?
EDIT: some people seem not to get the point of “millions of users”, which presumably includes non-techies that do not use adblockers. I mean that without ads (or mining?), no instance would be able to scale to the point where it can compete with Reddit for example. If you were to want that.
Instead of ads Lemmy operators should be paid for hosting. Users should be asked for funding on a periodic basis (perhaps a small number of subscribers could fund the entire hosting for all.)
No one should assume this is all free forever.
I can imagine an instance having a fundraising goal and different communities competing for how much they can raise.
Who are these imaginary users you think assume this is all free?
There are plenty of people who think they are “contributing” just by posting. Servers don’t run on memes.