blackstampede

True. This might be less of a problem if it becomes really easy to transfer your account to another instance, because people would just drift away from the ads, especially if other instances started creating filters to block them.

I'm not saying it's likely or would work, I'm just spitballing.

I imagine if Lemmy/the fediverse get big enough, corps will make accounts. It's a small step from there to making their own instances, then modifying those instances so that they can see out, but you have to be registered locally to see in. I'm not sure how difficult that would be to implement.

Might seem naive, but I actually have a hard time imagining this. There's just not a lot to make one instance more desirable than another, which seems like a bad thing, but I don't think it is. I decided against signing up on lemmy.ml because it was laggy, so I went with a smaller instance- all the same content, but without the lag. If a lot of content gets created on one instance, there's no pressure to pile in, because you can view, comment and interact from a different, smaller instance.

Is there any concern about the source code having some sort of monitoring capability? I'm not familiar with their codebase.

I believe you can still visit the community, even if it's blocked on your home instance. Instances can blacklist other instances from their /all feed though.

I'm not really concerned that any particular instance is really going to impact my usage of the fediverse, but thanks for the info. It's good to be aware that a particular instance may be biased.