That's a good point, paying for software isn't part of individual Linux users,' culture. At best, donations are encouraged, but even so you're not really paying for using the software.
To their credit, Gnome's software catalog integrates donation links. But you have to scroll to the very bottom to find it, between the project's homepage and bugtracker links. Giving the donate button more visibility would be an easy thing to do. To my knowledge there's no store (not gnome nor KDE) that integrate paid apps. Meanwhile iTunes or Steam allow almost one-click buy& install.
I do periodic tax-deductible donations to a local non-profit that help maintaining my Linux distribution. But that's not much compared to the effort developers put in.
Consider also that reddit is centralized (one software, one organization, one domain) while the fediverse is decentralized (multiple software, multiple orgs, multiple domains).
One Lemmy instance being unavailable would impact a portion of fediverse users. Reddit being unavailable impact all reddit users.
This brings up a good point about upscaling and other enhancements done by deep learning.
These techniques are not recovering details. They're using their model to fabricate new details that looks plausible but do not necessarily match reality.
It's time for open-source users to open their wallets (zdnet.com)
The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge (thomask.sdf.org)
Reddit really shit the bed today! (beehaw.org)
Samsung phones fake their moon shots (reddit.com)