It became the only reliable source of information I had. People posted links with a minimal amount of commentary, picking and choosing the best content from other social media networks. They’re not doing it to “build a brand” because that’s not a thing in the Fediverse. It’s too disjointed to be a place to build a newsletter subscription base.
There is no effective way to ban a person. As long as that remains true, moderation tools don’t really matter.
Israel alone is putting $760 million into propaganda. Lemmy may not be big, but it’s worth 0.2% of that budget.
And that’s just Israel.
israel is pretty new on the scene, only after '23 they significantly increased thier propaganda funding, russia still beats them with billions per year on propaganda, of course its not limited to just social media.
I think that’s trying to solve the wrong problem.
If I had awesome moderating tools, identifying and deleting comments that violate the policy would be effortless. I would not need to ban a person, which as you aptly point out, can reappear forever. But, I can ban all of his violating comments, which are, after all, the true target and violation, not the commenter.