The President isn’t elected by majority rule is the first thing that comes to mind.

It’s pretty much an objective fact that voting third-party (especially in a swing state), is indeed “throwing your vote away”. It has been well studied and well documented.

it’s pretty likely that instance owners will want to monetize as much as possible

I disagree. It’s find to have hobbies that don’t make money. Running a lemmy instance can be that.