On the one hand, I find idle browsing on Lemmy to be a lot more enjoyable than reddit. I see more stuff that I’ve never seen before, and I see less unfunny, uninteresting stuff.
On the other hand: I drew a comic and posted it to what is basically the only Lemmy comic group. I wanted to give Lemmy an honest chance, so that was the only place I shared it. I figured it’d be a nice change of pace since the group is almost entirely reposts from reddit.
My comic started to get some traction, and then the only mod in the only Lemmy comic group removed it for profanity. The profanity in question was the word “balls”.
A few days later I mentioned this story on reddit. Someone asked to see the comic, so I posted it to r/comics, and a few hours later it hit the front page of r/all.
So in my opinion, Lemmy suffers from a lot of the same problems as reddit (like petty tyrant mods), and some of those problems are exacerbated by its small size.
Obviously I don’t know what your finances are like, but is it possible she’s just enjoying herself and considers it a hobby? Comparing it to other games, $100/month can seem ridiculous, but comparing it to other hobbies, it might not be that bad.
I used to be unwilling to spend any amount on a mobile game until I thought about how much I used to spend playing Magic: the Gathering. Sometimes hobbies cost money.