My principal problem with the paid relays is that I haven't made up my mind yet whether I disagree with the premise.

I certainly can acknowledge the first-order effects of it, I just haven't decideded whether I think they are revolutionary for the good of future social media, or cancerous and going to be the end of all that is good and pure in the world.

Conceptually the most attractive thing to me is the removal of the paradigm of free stuff online meaning you are the product. A small voluntary fee from all users to help make the thing work sounds really really nice to me in my inner hippie free software commie brain. I just cannot decide whether this current iteration will metastasize and kill us all.