No, we ended up with Reddit from stupid top-down leadership stupidity. I have no problem with Reddit's awards and whatnot, I have a problem with them locking kicking out third party apps and limiting the mobile web experience.

If you don't like an instance's profit model, just move to another one or host your own. There are plenty to choose from, so competition will keep away the worst of it.

My preference is for monetary subscribers to get access to new features early and to get more of limited features (i.e. if everyone gets X awards to distribute/day, subs get 2X or something), but for features to eventually make their way to everyone else. This allows A/B testing in an interesting way while funding the project. Since the project is FOSS, individual instances can decide to roll them out to everyone or block usage of these optional features from other instances.

If instance admins will be paying hundreds per month for hosting, they should have some way outside of donations to recoup that cost (plus their time spent). I doubt anyone will get rich from it, but hopefully it'll be enough to help admins offset the costs.