As long as the ads don’t federate in an un-blockable way, they can do as they like. I wouldn’t make an account there, I’d rather donate actual money than have a degraded experience (which for sure works out better for everyone), but I get the drive to monetize.

And they should absolutely -not- be allowed to federate ads, for any reason, since it goes against the vibe. But inevitably there will be “sponsored posts” (probably already are), and I think those instances/users will see themselves fade to oblivion, as long as new users are brought to understand that they could just chip in $2 and never see an ad.

I use Boost and it has ads. But they're ignorable as a banner here and there, not constantly. I can live with that.

I usually have a private vpn. It’s just isn’t always up. And I can’t be bothered to have it maintained most times because I’m not in control.

I’m considering setting it up through my router which has a built in option, so I don’t have to rely on my third party, but honestly I almost never leave pihole protected networks. So not a priority.