Most Mastodon instances cover bills with a handful of supporters on Patreon. Centralizing is what racks up the big dollar figures. Even mastodon.social only cost about $280/month to run as of mid 2018.
It's not necessary for everyone to pay if the topology is right. They could have joined the growing ActivityPub fediverse and set up a managed hosting thing the way one of the major Mastodon contributors did.
The centralized sites spend much of their money on marketing and making ad deals. You don't need that if the social network is a standard feature you bolt your software on to and don't depend on ads.
https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Runni...
It's not necessary for everyone to pay if the topology is right. They could have joined the growing ActivityPub fediverse and set up a managed hosting thing the way one of the major Mastodon contributors did.
The centralized sites spend much of their money on marketing and making ad deals. You don't need that if the social network is a standard feature you bolt your software on to and don't depend on ads.