At the end of the day, even hardcore users are not willing to fork it over. Why? Because of all the content that is accessible without having to pay. People have gotten used to not paying for stuff like this over the years, what was going to make them start now? Development will always cost time and it will past a certain point always cost money. So many things cost money that if a site on its baby legs like Lemmy starts asking for more, you think its gonna get it? I doubt it and that sucks, but that just proves that you need that mainstream financial backing in order to host all the users and the content and it costs money, lots of it. And with hardcore users who are here before the mainstream, well, they aren’t the casuals who sink money into it, just plain and simple.