"the company looked at the history of social media over the past decade and didn’t like what it saw… existing companies that are only model motivated by profit and just insane user growth, and are willing to tolerate and amplify really toxic content because it looks like engagement… "
I dont know much about the primary developers of Lemmy, but from what I can tell this is a part time labor of love project for them. Its unreasonable to ask people to push beyond their boundaries or capacity so that their pet project can become a 1:1 replacement for an incredibly mature platform like Reddit overnight
To the detriment of the community, the admins, and the concept of the fediverse overall.
Unfortunately opinions do not always match.
If a large group of people do not agree with the direction the Lemmy devs are making, why not get together and create a new site forked off Lemmy's source code?
It seems like the fediverse is a return to a more liquid internet, similar to the early internet of the 90s. A lack of existing large infrastructure here is actually advantageous for new sites to startup.
With respect, maybe you shouldn't be commenting on what's going on behind the scenes. They are good developers but they're not good leaders or shepherds of such a big project. They need to hand over stewardship to someone that can be trusted.
Sometimes things become bigger than just what they were before, take on a life of their own.
When it gets to a humanity community level need then maybe the devs should turn it over to others who can do that, or at least accept the help of others who have been trying to help them grow it more/better.
We have a responsibility to ourselves, but we also have a responsibility to each other.