It appears to me that the current state of Lemmy is similar to other platforms when they were smaller and more insular, and that insularity is somewhat protecting it.
I browse Lemmy, and it feels a bit like other platforms did back in 2009, before they became overwhelmed and enshitified.
If I understand it correctly, Lemmy has a similar “landed gentry” moderation scheme, where the first to create a community control it. This was easily exploited on other platforms, particularly in regards to astroturfing, censorship, and controlling a narrative.
If/when Lemmy starts to experience its own “eternal September”, what protections are in place to ensure we will not be overwhelmed and exploited?
? That’s a bizarre response.
No one here is trying to fleece you. People are suggesting ways to run your own instance as that’s the major difference between Reddit and Lemmy; you’re not obligated to use someone else’s hardware or be subject to their rules, you can setup your own systems and have a bit more freedom. Reddit doesn’t give you that option.
Your account is subject to the rules of the instance it was created on, as well as the rules of each community you’re interacting with. If you run afoul of the admins for your instance, you can be banned, losing access to that account completely.
If you were to run your own instance; no single admin could ban your entire account if you pissed them off. You can still be blocked from communities or entire instances if you don’t play nicely with others, but you won’t lose the account so you can still use it in other instances/communities.
For most people this isn’t really necessary; but lemmy also has a pretty large number of tech nerds that like to self-host our own services, so you’ll get quite a bit of ‘heres how you can do it yourself’ type responses.
Unlike reddit, you can just setup your own space on your own hardware completely under your own control, if you don’t like what’s available.