Some people might find the answer to be obvious (yes) but I’ve rarely found it so. In fact, this is a question I often find in the linux community (regarding linux going mainstream, not lemmy) and people are pretty split upon it.
On one hand, you may get benefits like more activity, more content, more people to interact with, a greater chance you’ll find someone to talk to on some specific subject.
On the other, you could run into an eternal September like reddit, where Lemmy would lose its culture, and have far more spam and moderation issues.
I don’t know, what do you think?
lemmy is resistant to an eternal september situation due to the inherent mechanics of the fediverse. this may also be a reason why lemmy and the fediverse can’t become mainstream.
personally i want federated services to be mainstream to save the internet from the corporate stronghold it is currently suffering. a single company being the gatekeeper of all flow of information is a dangerous dictatorship.
Federation does put us in an odd situation in regards to the eternal September phenomenon. I don’t think it prevents it completely - if say lemmy.ml were overrun, and it’s original users migrated to a new instance, they would never be able to quite recreate lemmy as it is today.
even if lemmy.ml is overrun it doesn’t really matter since you can migrate your content to another instance. as long as that functionality is made obvious and easy, i think it could be pretty safe.
i mean, currently. the lemmy.ml network is specifically intended for leftist discussions. if you want to discuss a more focused hobby, such a practice would be better achieved on a lemmy instance specifically for said hobby. and then federate the other networks for communication.