That annoying “Fediverse chick” thing

I got a DM on Mastodon from that account; I didn’t realize it was spam. It was on an account that gets a modest amount of interaction from strangers, so I didn’t pay much attention to it.

if Reddit bans the word “luigi” both subreddits are affected

Several people have responded with things like this, but OP didn’t ask about that scenario. Of course federation solves that problem.

the need for a Fediverse wide fix being your opinion to be necessary for Lemmy to not be eventually destroyed as a whole

I think it’s more likely that Lemmy will stay niche than grow large enough to have an eternal September problem. If it does grow large, I think the risk is more a degraded experience than destruction.

I’m not understanding your point here. Can you reword it perhaps?

If I’m not happy with how /r/knives is run on Reddit, I can make /r/knife to compete with it.

The modlog entries I’ve read show the offending comment as well as the moderator given reason for a ban.

It shows part of the comment. I think there’s a limit on length, and it does not show media. The mod log is a good idea, but there’s room for improvement.

Where I’ll disagree with you that one has to exist or Lemmy will fail.

I never said Lemmy will fail, and that is not my position.

its easy to create an identically named community on another instance

It’s easy to create a differently named community on systems that don’t have this sort of server-based namespacing.

Modlog documents all actions including moderator censorship.

The part that’s missing is the original content mods removed. If I’m an abusive moderator and I want to censor someone, I’m not going to put “I don’t like your opinion” in the removal/ban reason; I’m going to put something that sounds reasonable like “racism” or “harassment”.

Beehaw is an example of a Lemmy instance immune to “Eternal September”

Time will tell. Either way, that’s not a solution for Lemmy as a whole.

I agree, but the server owner imposing unpopular rules is not one of the two problems the OP asks about. Those are:

• The first to create a community control it. This was easily exploited on other platforms, particularly in regards to astroturfing, censorship, and controlling a narrative.
• If/when Lemmy starts to experience its own “eternal September”, what protections are in place to ensure we will not be overwhelmed and exploited?

Decentralization with federated servers does not address those problems.

Decentralization provides a lot of important benefits, such as protection against worsening the whole system for profit, or imposing unpopular network-wide rules. I like it here; it’s fun in the way the old web was and the corporate web isn’t.

I think we’re in agreement that preventing moderators of popular communities from being assholes and handling large-scale abuse as OP asked about are not among those benefits.

And people wonder why I have no interest in getting a newer phone with an AI thing on it.

That does not appear to be the problem OP was asking about.

None. Someone is going to say federation helps here, but the effect is the same as creating an alternative to a popular subreddit under another name.

Any time I’m required to use an app for something that could be a website, I leave the app a one star review.