Don’t know what the exact cause was/is for this big surge - but I am glad to see it. No matter what personal problems people may have with the main devs, they are doing great work on the platform.
Also of interest, since this is a good place to plug things, other threadiverse things:
And I couldn’t find a way to donate to mbin, in lieu of that:
https://docs.joinmbin.org/contributing/
EDIT: The creator of mbin gave a link in the comments: https://melroy.org/donate.html
Do they have a link where your money doesn’t go towards moderation costs?
No. Because they’re scammers. They want you to pay them so they can ban people for being against genocide all day.