Don’t kid yourself, there will always be more toadies willing to play along for the sake of having their own little slice of authority, however meaningless it may be.
As far as I’m concerned, the modest barrier to entry for Lemmy is a good thing. The bigger Reddit got, the more it declined in quality. It’s still possible to be reasonable on Lemmy so far.
Easy money pipeline has been cut off, makes sense we’re all seeing this kind of thing at the same time when you consider it from the POV of the investors bankrolling these companies.