Some run the servers with the expectation of donations. Some run them at a loss. Some of us selfhost.

There are all a variety of ways to keep Lemmy free, where as Reddit is hosted by Reddit. They decide everything about Reddit.

You can set up a Lemmy instance with just a docker file lmao it's not exactly a large scale operation to upkeep.
If somehow every Lemmy instance went paid only, I'd host my own instance and invite my friends to use it too.

I worry that donations may not be enough and people say that it's not expensive to run. Regardless, I don't think they're forcing me to identify myself and building profiles on me to sell to the highest bidder. I'll pay Lemmy for that.

If I pay Facebook and Reddit they'll do both even if they say otherwise because I believe they lack ethics.

If this was the only path forward I wouldn't even be here. Thankfully it isn't because I can run my own server/community and just connect it to the feddiverse.

I would argue that there is a fundamental difference to this forum style system consisting mostly of text and links, and a traditional 'social media' that is entirely photography and short form video. Correct me if I'm wrong, but TikTok, Facebook, etc. store all of the multimedia content on their services themselves, right? The costs cannot be comparable.