[TheGrumpyBrit]

I agree, but I do wonder if the developers ideology will make it unsustainable.

I currently maintain two federated services - https://pixelfed.uk, which hasn't yet grown beyond a few people but costs next to nothing to host, and https://peertube.co.uk, which has a bit of a tendency for exponential growth. While it's not especially expensive right now, I'll only be able to allow it to grow so far before hosting costs will make it unsustainable.

I don't want to include any advertising, primarily because I don't want to deviate from the standard PeerTube experience, but because the developers provide no way for instance administrators to cover their hosting costs, the size of any one instance is self limiting. That may be a good or a bad thing depending on your position, but either way, I think the Fediverse will have difficulty becoming mainstream while running an instance can only really be viewed as a hobby rather than a potential income stream.