I feel like it will get even more interesting … (⁠ꏿ⁠﹏⁠ꏿ⁠;⁠)

What does this mean for admins regarding GDPR? Is lemmy still not GDPR complient? Are there options in place if users request their data?

An issue has already been raised: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1347

Are there plans to display the actual numer or is it just not possible becaus of the underlying protocol?

Yes, that would be the best. But as we have seen, users are drawn to the instances with the most users :/

Lets see what the future brings. As long as the user count is low there isn’t much of a problem, but if instances suddenly have millions of users, it will get expensive for admins to run the service. If too few people donate (what is usually the case), admins are forced to search for other ways to finance the infrastructure. The other point is AI, wheter you like it or not, if Lemmy is big enough, the content (conversations etc.) will be used to train LLMs. Also, the content will certainly be interesting for advertisers to learn user preferences. The difficulty comes with scale.

Why not load balance all content to all instances? So if an instance gets killed, the content remains. Or at least a backup strategy to rebuild an instance in the event of a take down

People stay if there is enough content and the user experience doesn’t suck. So fare, more and more people try to engage and build new communities. Just try to add value. Also the UI and Apps improved quickly but its fare from perfect :-)

All I see is this: (Firefox, fresh install)