They are not just funding existing projects like Lemmy, they are actively encouraging new projects by providing funding for “open internet” style stuff.
Though yes you are right, it is different from directly hiring people, since if they did that, it would be very hard to relinquish direct control of the project. Corps can’t act solely for the common good, governments have that as their stated mission.
You asked me to name a good service a government provides for a large number of people successfully. I named several. I get that you have ideological problems with goverments doing stuff, but governments not doing stuff results in what you can see in the US right now.
The original post is also not about a hypothetical ideological question, but that the US government was captured and dismantled by its corporations, and those corporations want to continue that societal rot over here. The EU cannot tolerate that.