Hosting text content online has been essentially free for two decades, and storage and bandwidth only got cheaper. $180/y is enough to serve a billion pageviews.

Unless you now have the overhead of a massive VC-funded organization that needs to grow and hit the expected return multiples. People are “whining” because this is a 180° turn from Wordpress’ origins and their mission of “democratizing publishing”.

It is also a ton of money for anyone outside the US and EU - it’s one month’s rent in most of Brazil.