About the lack of an algorithm: do we really want to recreate the addictiveness of for-profit platforms? Is tgat actually a healthy feature? Perhaps it’s better for society if our social media isn’t as addictive as possible.

And on manual validation for sign-ups: before the mass migration from Reddit, most instances didn’t seem to have validation, and then as it became popular, we got hit with trolls mass creating accounts posting CP and racist images, making it a game of whack-a-mole to stop it. As Lemmy is all volunteer run, we don’t have paid content moderators always watching for that stuff, nor did they have an automated content filter. The main solution is to validate sign-ups so that the moderators and admins are not overwhelmed with spam.