In the medium term I’m confident costs could be met using patreon or something similar for large instances.

Plenty of people willingly paid for reddit awards etc. I think most of us feel more loyalty to Lemmy than reddit in the light of recent events.

This. I’m ex-military. Our ration packs came with these highly processed cans of cheese. I’d go 4-5 days without doing a shit.

Was never a good time after though