$12 per month and user for a "social experience" that still tracks you and spams you is an insane amount. If you consider that amount × 1000 for a very modest

$12 per month and user for a "social experience" that still tracks you and spams you is an insane amount. If you consider that amount × 1000 for a very modest open source fediverse instance hosting circa one thousand users, that is more than enough to sustain admins, moderators and spare change for some development. The economic model of social media never made any sense and its hard to see how it will sustain going forward.