In particular, it seems to me that centralization is almost a law of the universe (or at least a tendency). Lemmy may start decentralized, with dozens or hundreds of meaningfully-sized instances, but it’s easy to imagine a not-far future where most everyone has settled on just a handful of instances (or even just one).
I don’t mean to just be a pessimist here. I’m sure I’m far from the first person to wonder about this, and I’m curious whether there are ideas of how to counterbalance the tendency toward centralization.
The interesting thing is whether there’s enough resale value in a Lemmy instance to justify the very real operational costs of it. Obviously depends a lot on how the post-blackout times go, but I share the opinion that any federation of moderation/data/etc. is a win, even if it’s perhaps more centralized than would be ideal.