I don't think its the best alternative either but definitely better than ads, why should you be mad some people can customize little things in their profile? Discord does this and you don't see many complaining about it, they usually criticize other aspects of Discord. Also, you can't even currently do that on Mastodon I think (correct me if I'm wrong, I could be), you could easily do that on Misskeys which most instances are japanese and the biggest instances don't accept non-Japanese residents because of past history of people forcing english when they clearly state to be Japanese-only. Also, it's closer to Mastodon in terms of usage and looks than Twitter, and Mastodon isn't so similar to Twitter. Easier for this guy to criticize when not suggesting what should be done instead, people obsessively hating on BlueSky doesn't look so upset some of them are going to Threads instead which is a lot worse for the Fediverse to reach to and from, compared to BlueSky. Maybe give ideas on how to make it easier for non-tech people to be more appealed to use something they've never heard of (federalization), have to choose an instance (at this point most already give up) and learn how to communicate with people from other instances. So hard to make constructive criticism, right?

It's not constructive criticism, I never claimed that it was. It's just my personal opinion. I find paying for a social media site ridiculous. Donating to a Lemmy/Mastodon/(insert any Fediverse service) instance is absolutely fine, donating to FLOSS software projects or open data projects is totally fine, but paying a monthly fee for some random feature just feels weird to me. And the fact that Elon Musk popularized it, makes it even more ridiculous for me.