I really can't blame people for getting burned out--hardware costs are expensive as fuck right now, software exploits are more urgent than ever, the entire Internet is endless sea of bots, and there is no mechanism in place to offset any of the associated costs or work to the community. As things are right now, a small minority of fediverse users are shouldering all of the burden of various costs so that the rest of us can use this infrastructure for free.

From a money and time standpoint, it seems mostly unsustainable, and it's not something that can go on forever or scale up and up.

I think there are ways to make it more sustainable, like quotas, subscriptions and ads... But they are pretty unpopular.

Unlike corporate social media, we can't rely on leveraging other people's money in the form of VC or stocks, and so we are left mainly with voluntary donations.

But in the end, the health of the fediverse is arguably in the breadth and diversity of its servers. While it's good to have some newbie friendly flagship servers, it's probably better if everybody isn't concentrated on the same few mega servers.

And it's a shame when a server goes down because the person running it burns out or can't afford it. But this usually ends up being a social problem moreso than a technical one. And social problems can be mitigated (or avoided) by improving communicating and making sure that we aren't putting all of the load on any one person. There are cultural changes that we can make to improve the health of specific communities and instances.