The 2 Lemmy devs have funding. About 1500 total from community support, with the rest coming from a sponsorship/incubator type deal. A deal which pays out when targets/goals are achieved.
Which made me laugh at this:

sure, let me stop doing my day job and start planning on this completely unpaid enhancement

Which is entirely what you are asking the Lemmy devs to do.

Thanks for raising awareness of the spam-bot-account issue.