I don’t think this is about donations. Did you try registering again with more information about why you want to join?
Nitter unfortunately does not work right now due to this change. Hopefully they will fix this somehow (probably by changing user agent to googlebot, because they still allow web crawlers)
Maybe they have some little niche communities they do not want to just abandon.
That is why I still use reddit - when you have a really niche hobby or interest and finally discover a community of people that you can share the joy of that interest with, that feels great - you do not want to lose that community that you have longed for for so long.
I am part of some niche communities that have an activity level and a user base that is hard to beat on reddit. I am doing my part here on Lemmy and created local c/dolls and c/denpasong communities on my home instance, but of course nobody is interested here on Lemmy. I am giving Lemmy some time of course, but I am afraid that I will stay lonely with my little communities here on Lemmy unfortunately.
I just thought the same thing. This cannot be true. I refuse to believe it