Absolutely agree. According to a few articles, reddit isn’t that profitable. But apart from paying for servers, what overhead do they have? Most all of the mods were volunteers. Content creators are volunteers (I mean, we’re the content creators after all). Now after having some (still very little) experience with Lemmy, most of the cost goes to the servers, which many of the server hosts here are posting patreons in order to keep things running which I think is great! I love that setup. I’d have no problem paying a small amount to help with hosting.
Think of Wikipedia… they’re still a donation only website. If that site turns to only seek profit it would really shift the way Wikipedia works and what it presents.
Reddit had reddit premium, buying those awards and stuff and the ad revenue. I’d really really like to see how it isn’t profitable unless the higher ups are just greedy and are expecting millions of dollars for sending their people to go to board meetings.
This is incredibly helpful! Thank you so much!