!android@lemmy.world was the 15th largest community in the fediverse with 19k subscribers, and then the mods conspired with the r/android mods to lock that community and move it to !android@lemdro.id. All of this was done with no input from the users subscribed there.
That of course led to a flame thread yesterday, and a whole bunch of debate about whether !android@lemmy.world should be reopened or not. It appears to be locked still, so not sure how that debate ended.
But I said it shows how fragile communities are because that was about as blatantly obvious of a community snatch as there possibly could be. Like 10 mods got in a room and said “let’s just move this huge community to a new instance” and it worked. There’s no way we’re going to stop Meta if we can’t even stop that.
How does that work from a user perspective? If they were subscribed to android@lemmy.world , would the subscription transfer over to the new community without them realising, or would they need to manually subscribe?
I don’t have a problem with communities being able to move. The users should be notified and have the option to transfer too or leave. Over time, the values may diverge.
I also think the power should rest with the mods to do so. However, it would be wise for them to consult the community. For larger communities, you’ll likely never have consensus, so someone needs to be able to decide. If any instance became hostile or overrun by undesirables, moving would make sense.
I imagine the current threat from meta will be divisive and some communities values may differ from the instance they are on.
