Lemmy dev here, for what its worth I stopped posting about politics years ago, and also dont do any moderation on lemmy.ml besides occasionally banning an obvious spam account. I simply dont have the time or interest anymore, and prefer to focus my time on development which benefits all Lemmy users.

Posting from alt account because these comments are not federating to my home instance.

Thank you!

lemmy.ml is part of Lemmy development as it is used to test new versions before release, take performance measurements and have first-hand experience with the mod tools. And in any case the server is already paid for, so all donations now go to developer salaries.

Edit: Additionally lemmy.ml hosting is only funded via Opencollective, so if you donate through any other platform the money goes entirely to developer salaries.

Which red flags do you mean? Is there a better way to ask for donations?