Imagine the type of chaos it would cause if it came out that the LW admins were getting a corporate kickback to destabilize the Fediverse, or that they were involved in some other equally shady enterprise. It would probably be the end of the Fediverse, either through the created schisms or the lack of will to stop the corporate meddling
I agree that LW centralization isn’t good, but I’m not sure such event would be the end of the Fediverse, or Lemmy.
People would just massively move to other instances. LW communities usually have a non-LW non-lemm.ml alternative (such as !movies for !movies ), so that should be doable. A bit painful, but manageable.