Looking at it from another perspective what is the INCENTIVE to run a Mastodon server? What are those server costs and time to setup and moderate worth?
my guess is it’s the same rewards that drove people to run usenet servers, bbs servers, irc servers, forums, countless open-source projects, and whatever other non-centralized platforms flourished in the past and present.
Like I said, notoriety and control of users. People ran BBS servers to be sysops, IRC servers to get O:lines, open source projects to get their name out there, etc. "Pure altriusm" could also be a motivator.
as someone who has been significantly involved in open source projects and contributing to hosting for various projects for years, “control” and “notoriety” are rarely what people are getting lol.