At the very least, #Mastodon should have foreseen the reflexive gagging reaction of users to the optics of staffing the new board with a Twitter founder and a lawyer who defends the makers of "AI" theft-bots.
I don't begrudge Eugen wanting to make a decent living. And I'd like to see funding to fuel Mastodon development.
I just hope that development comes in the form of, say, actually filtering all views based on my language preference -- not techbro sludge like "AI assistants."