Say a competent & committed person launched a premium instance. #Calckey, let’s say, but it could be any #Fediverse flavor.
By premium I mean that it would require all accounts to pay $15/month.
Further assume that 100 people would sign up for that. (For the record; I would totally sign up for that.)
That’s $1500/month. Not a living wage, but possibly enough to make it worth their while to do all the backend shit people like me cannot do, which likely is not anywhere near a full-time job.
I know the devil is in the details, but on broad strokes… why wouldn’t this work?