Will this undermine most of what makes IAmA special? Probably. But Reddit leadership has all the funds they need to hire people to perform those extra tasks we formerly undertook as volunteer moderators, and we’d be happy to collaborate with them if they choose to do so.
Who’s going to mod this place?
People who have actual agency over their communities and aren’t at the whims of a corporation.
A Lemmy community can have real collective ownership. You can create your own instance where you own your own hardware. Or if you don’t want to have to manage a whole instance, it’s technically possible that a bigger instance could sell hosting if you don’t want to officially partner with the insurance and the community could pay for their own hosting that way to have true autonomy. Lemmy has lots of ways and potential ways for communities to be able to own themselves.