The article is a year old, fyi.

That's a good question: I don't mean that 100% of their stack should be FOSS but

1. Most of their "code", or their core offering, should be FOSS. For instance, Codeberg is powered by free software (Forgejo), in addition to being hosted in Europe.
2. More importantly and inclusive of the first point, they should adhere to FOSS ethos: users should be able to export their data easily in a standard format, federate with other instances running compatible software, and so on. For instance, Bluesky is free software implementation of free AT Protocol, but Bluesky is also the only provider (instance) of that service. There is an effort named "Free Our Feeds" who is looking to raise 4 million dollars to setup a second instance while Mastodon has 200+ instances alone listed on its website. :)

Absolutely, and it's already pretty hard to bootstrap a community organically† to so you should not hesitate to do what's necessary to keep it healthy as small communities cannot moderate themselves easily.

† From How Reddit Got Huge: Tons of Fake Accounts:

Well, according to Reddit cofounder Steve Huffman, in the early days the Reddit crew just faked it ‘til they made it. In the above video for Udacity, an online source for education and lectures, Huffman describes how the first Redditors populated the site’s content with tons of fake accounts.

Glad to hear! As I said, Lemmy is still so young that it makes perfect sense. Even much more mature and much larger communities take similar measures:

1. Hacker News users cannot downvote anything until their karma is > 500 and even then only comments (not submissions) source.
2. Some large Reddit communities such as r/politics hide downvote buttons altogether or for non-subscribed users. They even ran a study back in 2018: Does Hiding Downvotes Improve Behavior in r/politics?

   Community cultures vary widely, but in the case of r/politics, hiding downvotes does not appear to have had any of the substantial benefits or disastrous outcomes that people expected.

I'm not saying that downvotes are bad, but that people abusing downvote mechanism are bad and that it's okay to ban such users while bootstrapping a community.

In my opinion replacing US Big Tech with European alternatives is bullshit unless they are also free software. Many European alternatives who started in Europe later moved to the US when they got big for better access to capital etc. It's like moving from Twitter/X to Bluesky only to see its enshittification 10 years down the line.

Ban them.

Lemmy is so young (and feeble) that users like those are an actual threat to your community and the larger network by driving away those who actually contribute to the community. In 2019, TrueBirch from Reddit analysed the data and concluded that only 1.9% of users actually comment or post while 98.1% just lurks. When your community is has a thousand or so users, it's entirely reasonable to protect those ~20 users who are creating content for the rest. In fact, the majority of the rest likely don't upvote things either.

By “Fediverse” people usually refer to “ActivityPub”-based social networks such as Mastodon and Lemmy.

People also rightfully argue that Bluesky, despite the best of intentions, is not decentralised. See How decentralized is Bluesky really? (long read).

Why?

There is BitTorrent which I'm sure you're aware of, and then there is also WebTorrent which you may not.

I'm also actively working on this exact problem with WebMirror with the key difference being that it works in browsers without requiring any additional software. Here is its demo: https://webmirror-demo.netlify.app/

How is Brave right wing? Because of cryptocurrencies?

I read this on Hacker News, which I found particularly interesting:

Elon Musk’s bid for OpenAI isn’t about buying it but about disrupting its transition to a for-profit company. OpenAI Inc., the nonprofit, controls OpenAI LP, the capped-profit subsidiary. To convert to a full for-profit entity, OpenAI Inc. must sell its technology and IP to the new company, with regulators determining a fair valuation.

The rumored SoftBank investment at a $260B valuation relies on this transition, but the current estimated valuation is around $150B. Typically, control premiums in such deals range from 20-30%, putting the expected nonprofit payout at $30B-$40B. However, Musk’s $97B bid for OpenAI Inc.’s assets sets a significantly higher valuation, giving regulators a strong argument that the nonprofit should receive much more.

If regulators adopt Musk’s benchmark, OpenAI Inc. would end up with a 62% majority stake, making the transition far more complex or even blocking it entirely. Even though OpenAI won’t accept Musk’s offer, the bid’s primary effect is to make the legal and financial process of going for-profit much more difficult. It’s a strategic move designed to frustrate OpenAI’s leadership, particularly Sam Altman, and potentially derail the entire transition.

How does it compare to ollama in your experience?