The more I spend time on Lemmy, the more I think it is in a lot of trouble. There are many serious issues that need to be addressed and I don’t see how most of them can be.
Federation is touted as a Good, but has many drawbacks. Privacy (as listed in this post for example) for one, instead of algorithm curated/focused content federated servers each enforce (subconsciously or overtly) a theme, rampant user generation off multiple servers rendering moderation pointless, and so on.
Then there is the rampant issue of moderation abuse. It seems that the only reason to be a moderator is to not be annoyed at other people forcing their opinions on you. This reminder that admins/mods get yet another way to subject the users to their biases is the nail in the coffin IMO. “You vote this way? Banned because my feelings matter more”.
Privacy is important for a lot of people and that is impossible to get on Lemmy unless something drastically changes, but it doesn’t sound like this is will ever happen. The people that can see your data is not under your control at all and I think this fact alone will never allow Lemmy to grow to a place we can be happy with.
If admins can see data without limits, everyone should be able to. All 5 of us once that realization sinks in.
;tldr I don’t think even admins should see peoples data but that seems impossible so…