I also have an account on another instance. The sole admin hasn’t been heard of for three weeks. There don’t seem to have been any mod actions for a month and the instance hasn’t been updated to the latest version.
At the moment I’m more concerned about the admin (I hope they are okay). But what would happen if they don’t show up? I guess eventually the instance would disappear without warning or be defederated if bad actors take over.
Is there anything built in to Lemmy that would allow a takeover if a big instance went under?
If your only lemmy account resides on that instance, then I would encourage you to download LASIM (Lemmy Account Settings Instance Migrator) (source: https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim ) and run that to export all your subscriptions. I’d also encourage you to set up one or two more lemmy backup accounts on other instances and import your user subscriptions and settings to those other instances. Doing this now, while your current instance is still running, would save you a lot of pain and suffering later if that instance you are using is just shut down or deleted.
Since lemmy instances are owned fully by their admins, there’s no concept of allowing a hostile takeover of someone else’s instance. Just the thought of this is a little absurd and would already have been exploited for wrongdoing if it were possible.