The number of users in lemmy is so low compared to reddit. Those who buy this app are way less here. In reddit there were 100k+ downloads. Here it is not even going to be half of it. So price change can be justified.
One point I like to say is yeah this price is too high for some third world countries. Region based pricing should be there. 20$ here is 10% of my income (entry level job). So it will take time for me to buy the app. Until then i support the ad driven model. I am getting far better user experience with this app than all other lemmy apps I have tried.
That is true, however this is not really relevant for buying a product. And an app that relies on ads where you can buy premium for $20 is just that in my eyes, a commercial product, and that is fine. But dividing the costs between all users to estimate a price is weird to me, that's not how market works and ignores offer and demand. This argument is nothing a potential buyer would consider when buying an app. And $20 is a lot of money especially in todays time. I don't think I have seen a price like that apart from really big commercial apps. But yeah if you want to support, do that, but consider spending money to your instance instead and using one of the other great apps available.