For now. Commercial servers are possible, especially if communities become multi-instance in the future.

Every mature decentralized service calls them providers. Phone providers, ISPs, email providers, etc. I guess usenet just calls them “news servers”, though.

Agree on a technical level, but in terms of the average netizen being able to visualize the relationship, “providers” makes it much easier

It’s provider/consumer (not customer, something being a “provider” doesn’t necessarily mean they are selling stuff).

We are consumers, we consume the content that the instances provide, as content providers.