As a result, our instance https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/ got 625 new user registrations (of which 536 where accepted) in the past 24 hours! And the registrations are not abating even now. We still get like 10 new ones per hour!
I suspect this is probably the largest advertisement, for lemmy specifically, since the main reddit blackouts 1.5 years ago.
Have your own instances also seen an influx of new users?
I don’t think defed has been that bad, and I think over time we’ll get more features to avoid having to defed (aside from illegal content or spam).
Like users being able to block users and/or communities by instance, or admins being able to set default block lists for new users, or users being able to easily share block lists.