Rivals such as Reddit, the groups who benefit from the ease at which they can manipulate what people see on Reddit to further their agendas (companies, governments, groups).

And fascists in general, who hate open global community platforms that are hard to control, and hate things that bring people together, things that give people strength to fight together against things bigger than them.

All it takes is one of those interested parties to fund a couple of low rent hackers to poke at Lemmy until it's so unstable and untrustworthy that people stop using it.

Cheap and effective if done right, a good investment in the long run for any discerning fascist.

Spez loses. Maybe he's the one behind it cause he's salty that people called him out for being a pedophile.

The motivation could also be just trying to get the instance shut down, or otherwise break it, like the user that was spamming communities not that long ago.

Nothing too conspiratorial.

I don't think either a corporate entity or another instance/software type is behind this. The motivation for these people is the same as those who used to post a certain image with the word 'goat' as part of the title all over usenet binary groups and web forums. They simply find it funny that so many people are appalled and they feel a sense of power that they've affected so large a community. There's nothing more complicated than that to it.

Exactly.