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A reminder in the age of the Fediverse: if you're not the customer, you're still the product.
(slrpnk.net)
OP was taking about Tumblr, but I think it applies even more to the Fediverse: users need to develop an ethos of paying to support the sites they use. Otherwise advertisers pay the bills and call the shots.
Just want to add to the discussion here a critique of some sort of the fediverse:
I don't think the fediverse has settled on a stable and/or healthy culture when it comes to money, finances and support. And realistically, the sooner it does so the better off or more sustainable it is likely to be in the future.
I think there's an odd cultural mix here ... of people accustomed to the "everything online is free" culture/world, people like in the OP snippet that believe everything should be paid for, people who are actually happy with ads and no privacy and people who are vehemently anti-capitalism to the point that they start to get upset the moment there's any exchange of money toward any sort of centralised organisation.
IMO, you can see this in the way that the whole fediverse relies entirely/mostly on donations (and volunteers, a lot) and yet the state of finances are often not transparent at all and the process of providing donations is not front and center almost as though the fediverse wants to keep the appearance of the "everything is free online" social media era. I think it'd be fair to say that this is in large part because many admins don't want to deter users and are operating their instances out of passion and a certain degree of privilege they have that allows them to do so out of their own pocket/time.
But the question hanging over the whole ecosystem is how sustainable is it. It's probably very useful to keep in mind that the previous (or still current) "era of social media" has been long lasting ... with Twitter, Reddit and Youtube being "go to" places online for over a decade (and now basically the historically definitive era of the internet). Many, I'd argue, are accustomed to online places lasting a long time. I've spoken to some moving from twitter to masto (where there's a more personal investment and "settlement" or identity) who are also trying to get their communities to come over ... and they're not even aware just how much they are presumptuously thinking about masto/fediverse on "twitter" time scales (ie 10-15 yrs) without realising how shaky the fediverse's foundations for longevity might be (at least without some great hassle caused by having to re-route around failed instances and forked platforms etc).
I see co-ops and non-profits on the rise (lemmy.world's recent announcement being an example) ... but overall the culture on the fediverse has by no means "solved" the problem of financial stability and sustainability and I personally would like to see more discussion around what that can and should look like.