So one of the defenses we have against this is the federated nature of lemmy. It’s not “Lemmy” that you join. It’s an instance run by some people you hopefully have found to align with your values. That instance does not need to grow large on its own for the whole network to be strong and you can maintain moderation in the instance by limiting then number of members joining. This doesn’t weaken Lemmy, there are other instances that denied applicants can go to and they can all interact. Think of it like a bus service where if one bus is too full, you can just catch the next one. Except the next bus is already there waiting for you. It may just be enough of a disruption to stop a hivemind from moving in and taking over entirely, especially if instances are founded on a strong sense of culture. Beehaw certainly has its own culture compared to other instances and that’s a great thing to hold on to when lot’s of people show up and want things to work here exactly how they worked elsewhere.

Edit: We don’t WANT to host the mass exodus from reddit. But if during that exodus a bunch of people who find they like our way of doing things better happen to join us then that’s amazing.