I think YouTube has said that Premium, formally Red, viewers do count more for ad revenue and other things like that for creators than free viewers. A streamer I follow I think said they were worth 5x for him

I love how his last name is pronounced “to share a” and he did, in abundance

I think it’s easy to understand Mastodon, or any federated service, using a metaphor for a country or large place, where you can say “I want to move to X country” but then you have to actually pick a place IN that country to live, like a specific city or rural district. Once you decide on your instance, it’s really not that hard

Things seem to have improved in the last 5 years, so maybe give it another shot. I’m on Fedora 40 with gnome and lots of extensions, and I’m constantly tinkering with it to make it look just right (for fun, not that I feel like I have to). Nothing catastrophic has happened yet!🤞