For every Wikipedia or Thunderbird that gets millions in donations you get thousands of others that cannot live off sparse donations alone.
And since you are lazy to read the article:
"After three years of running our Fediverse server, we're shutting it down. Not because we've given up on the Fediverse, but because it isn't safe or sustainable enough for a community org like ours to run a server on a shoestring...
...Since 2024, all of our core funding and funding bids have fallen away. The server dwindled to three active users, and the operating costs and effort of keeping it maintained were no longer worth it for our economy of scale. It was a bigger cost, and more effort, than the rest of our hosting put together."
This is one of many examples of hobbyist / community run instances of what you describe, as donations didn't even work for them and they shut down.
Remember, they cannot do ads or subscriptions, so donations are their only way to be sustainable.
> I'm not sure how old you are, but in the early 2000s...
Spare us your fallacious "back in the old days" argument, we aren't there anymore, we are talking about now.