The ethos of the fediverse (insofar as it’s completely free with no ads) won’t be sustainable at scale; income for continued development and support does need to be taken into account at some point, and that goes for servers, frontends, apps, etc. Funding from donations only gets you so far. We will have to talk about it some day.
However, it is entirely too soon for ads and subscriptions. This feels openly and brazenly like talking advantage of Sync overly enthusiastic fanclub and the Sync name recognition. Get in early with a big name and start making money before any other big name apps like Boost are released.
Only if you leave your mic unmuted.
This is a troubling advancement, they all are, but the methods of countering this specific one are plentiful.
Really, what’s needed is a more robust mute function with a good voice recognition system that automatically cuts off the mic when you’re not speaking. That, and people need to learn to use push to talk.