I’m fairly new and don’t 100% understand it yet, but instances are run on servers that require money. Are we heading towards seeing ads or subscriptions to raise funds instead of relying on donations to cover overhead?
Especially with the influx of new users. Hardware upgrades are needed.
I’ll be honest with you, I would rather have the ban lists than not. No server is required to use them, and the amount of spam and fraud they filter out is enormous. If someone gets on an IP blocklist because they either can’t or don’t know how to secure their system, then no one should trust anything from them. Having a way to identify them before they cause a problem is enormously helpful.
There is already a project underway to identify federated servers that just spew spam, and I am all for it.
Okay you do have a point. The thing is they get abused for email where it’s pretty much a racket. I just really hope Lemmy doesn’t end up the same way, since if some bad faith powerful actor starts having control over a list then they get to dictate which servers can federate and which ones not, which is pretty much a walled garden.
I do get the need to identify malicious instances preemptively though, spambots are a threat wherever we go and some instances are just insufferable like exploding heads.