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.
This is dangerous and should be forbidden…
Best answer so far thank you!