i do understand it's not That Easy to just make a fedi server, considering you need to not only put up with... uh, literally everything about making a fedi server (especially in this space, where you have to defederate every single instance that either wants to kill you, or wants to "support" you with child abuse promoters)
but i'd say there's gotta be a few people out here who definitely have the capability of doing all this... but just, aren't, because they don't feel any motivation to.
i got my spark of motivation when aethy threatened to shut down, of course it turns out they didn't and i'm very glad it didn't, but i still plan on running this instance for the foreseeable future. me purposefully ensuring this remains a small instance is a big contributing factor for this, it'd be a nightmare to manage this instance otherwise.
so if we had a lot more people running smaller instances, even if it's just for their friends and nobody else, that'd be fantastic.