That's not accurate and that's a false equivalency and you know it, man.
I hate reddit and everything but reddit is still "free" last time I checked (though the users are the product.)
We're here because reddit screwed up alternative app devs, and it also worsened the user experience for everyone.
And the "reddit payments" are there solely to enrich some board member assholes.
Donating to Lemmy instance maintainers so they recoup some of the server costs for something they pretty much consider a hobby is definitely not the same.
I was a Redditor for 14 yrs or so never paid a penny. I left because of censorship, shadow banning, bots and shills, atroturf'd voting and manipulation of content and posts from the reddit team themselves due to bribes or whatever support they get from forign entities, how they killed all 3rd party apps, and how they use their users data and abusing their mods and subs under those mods control.
Plus reddit used to be fun. I remember thinking at the end of the day, "I'll browse reddit until I read something that makes me laugh out hard" and withing 15-20 minutes, I was laughing my ass off.