Honestly, most FOSS maintainers are in a lose-lose situation no matter their position, especially when they have a large userbase.

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If they're too nice, then they're not going to express their controversial opinions on some matters to avoid conflict.

If they're "mean", then users will start harassing them, speak ill of them, etc.

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If they're doing the work for free, then they're not receiving any money from it. If they need money and start "begging" for it, then users will hate it and might want to switch to something else.

If they're employed by a company, then they're going to be trashed for getting paid and not having the "true spirit of FOSS" and whatever project they'll be maintaining will be considered as "corporate infested" or any kind of synonym automatically.

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If they have no way of getting data properly (e.g. telemetry, used features, etc.), including from less technically inclined users, then they won't be able to improve their software properly.

If they adopt some sort of telemetry, then users will call it "spyware" and might want to switch to something else. If it's opt-in, then most users will have it disabled anyway.

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If they stick with more ethical platforms (GitLab, Matrix, etc.), then they'll lose many potential contributors, as they have a much smaller userbase than proprietary platforms. On top of that, they'll be worsening accessibility as the more ethical platforms often have worse accessibility.

If they use proprietary platforms (GitHub, Discord, etc.), then, well, it'll probably leave with some level of discomfort for relying on proprietary platforms.

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If they continue to work on their project for a long time (especially for free) and start losing motivation, then they might still continue to maintain it to not lose the massive community they've built, but potentially be burned out by it.

If they deprecate the project, then users will think that the maintainers never cared for the community, nor did they care about their project.

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(Just to be clear, when I say "users", I don't mean everyone. It's not meant to generalize.)