I've got no issue kicking Ernest a fiver (and in fact I did), but part of the issue is, we shouldn't be advocating for kbin.social or any of their other instances becoming the "Big Kahuna" That defeats half the purpose of being a federated protocol in the first place. Get a VPS of your own, spin up an instance, invite your friends and family, and spread the load. If you poke around, you can get a suitable VPS that can support a small number of users quite inexpensively.
I don't have mine up and running yet, but it's in the works, as soon as I muddle through how.
jclinares
i_need_a_vacation