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A reminder in the age of the Fediverse: if you're not the customer, you're still the product.
(slrpnk.net)
OP was taking about Tumblr, but I think it applies even more to the Fediverse: users need to develop an ethos of paying to support the sites they use. Otherwise advertisers pay the bills and call the shots.
Your first paragraph is what the website formally known as Twitter is doing. There's an option to pay $8 a month for various perks, yet the site continues to harvest their data. Yet, a lot of people are paying that $8 for whatever reason.