This is too quick of a movement towards defederation. Except in the most extreme of circumstances, it should be up to individual users whether they want to engage with other communities, and users can always block communities they find objectionable. It is not in the best interest of users to treat them as being incapable of making their own reasoned decisions about this kind of thing.

Fortunately, thanks to the wonders of the fediverse, I can just make a new account on a different instance and start engaging with Lemmy that way. Anyone have any recommendations on alternatives to lemmy.world?

I love Lemmy, but as others have already said, the vast majority of these signups are likely bots. Pretty spooky.

Another thought: making a community can also be a nice structured incentive to check in on your hobby regularly. I like looking for videos or articles to link to for my yugioh community even though there’s not many people subscribed - it gives me an opportunity to interact with and think about the game in different ways than I normally do.