What makes people set up instances? There’s no money involved. Even selling your instance data to AI companies are difficult as they could easily just set up their own and federate.
My guess would be that ideology would be one reason to set one up.
Theres also less competition, so there’s less repercussions for bans / dysfunctional mod behaviour.
Given the opportunity, humans tend to want echo chambers rather than real discussions.
Note: These are some of my thoughts on this, and none are based on facts.
Nice