I too was one of those neckbeards, so I use the term with love. :)

I certainly think we should voluntarily create some crowd-funded free-to-use services like the fediverse. But we can’t pretend that commerce doesn’t exist.

People are going to try to make money by hosting stuff online and enticing people to go there and use it. I would prefer if those people made money by charging admission instead of by collecting and selling data.