yeah, that's tough to say. on this instance, since I've moved to a new host (about 17 days ago), we're at almost 1TB of traffic, if that helps at all?

Unlikely; every time a new version comes out, the data:traffic ratio will change.

For instance, they’re currently working to replace websockets. When that’s done, it should decrease data use while increasing responsiveness.

I don't want "the same reddit experience," because the reddit experience sucks. That's why I'm here instead of caving in and using the official reddit app. I wouldn't mind some form of advertising, but annoying advertising I have to manually scroll past is how you get people to use ad-blockers and alternatives.

Edit: Like, I see sites change their backgrounds to ads, and that, to me, is perfectly fine because it doesn't affect my experience. Ads like that would be much nicer.

there's no built in way to add ads in lemmy, even if I wanted to, and I highly doubt the devs would ever add that as a feature (just a guess).