Note that a lot of free VPNs are easily identifiable and blacklisted by a lot of websites. Hell, even some paid ones have blacklisted IPs sometimes.

Browser fingerprinting is a thing (identifying someone by their browser’s configuration and fonts, amongst other things), but I don’t see them using that for bans honestly.

There is indeed, one of the rooms in Lemmy’s space is “Lemmy Instance Admin Chat” (!OwmdVYiZSXrXbtCNLw:matrix.org)

You’re right, a few additions / changes to the Join Lemmy page would indeed go a long way.
Regarding account migration, I’m fairly certain it’ll be implemented in the future if the project lives on long enough.

For what it’s worth, having a few “bigger” instances means less confusion for users who don’t completely understand federation yet but still want to make the switch. I wouldn’t call it a bad thing, they can always turn to another smaller instance later on.

I’m not quite sure what you mean 😅
If you mean “joining the sub” like you would on Reddit, click on the community’s link in my comment, then click on “subscribe” in the sidebar, on the top right :)

Bit of a self promo but since this thread is getting traction and people coming here might be looking for subreddits alternatives…
If you’re bi or like bisexual memes, it’d be great if you joined us over at !bi_irl@lemmy.ml :)

The biggest pain you’ll face is identifying which driver version you’ll need, and whether you should be on Wayland or Xorg.
Once you figure that out, in my experience (GTX 1060 on Fedora), you’re golden. Installation itself isn’t hard then.

A ban for first offense seems excessive, but to be fair, this whole situation must be quite stressful for them and being asked by hundreds of users for support of X or Y alternative seems like it would quickly become annoying.