Subscriptions have gotten a bad rep lately because of companies that try to turn a product (like a car and heated seats) into a “service”, but there is nothing inherently wrong/unfair about someone that provides a service that has occurring and constant costs based on usage.
Also, for those that want to have full control over their own identity, they can have their own managed server, which is still a bit expensive but will be made a lot cheaper with the next generation of fediverse services (like takahe and mitra) . Once that gets more mature, users would be able to bring their own domain and a service provider would be a commodity like an email hosting service. In the case where I can port account and my identity to different providers by simply changing a DNS record, the power will be fully in the hands of the people and there will be nothing for them to worry about.