That's really only a problem for centralized services, though. Federated services (like Mastodon[0]) don't really have this problem, because they scale horizont

That's really only a problem for centralized services, though. Federated services (like Mastodon[0]) don't really have this problem, because they scale horizontally over lots of small instances that can be supported by donations or co-op membership fees. And distributed services like Secure Scuttlebutt[1] don't have this problem at all, because every user pays for their own use. Beyond the self-inflicted problem of trying to scale one system to support the whole world, having to make a profit rather than just be self-supporting drives the need to monetize and use dark patterns. [0]: https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/ [1]: https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/