I think it’s OK to have specific instances ban certain stuff especially piracy. Those issues concern legal things and risking a general lemmy instance which is fairly large is not worth it. Those things are better put on a dedicated instance that will be tolerant to legal problems. Same rules don’t have to apply to all lemmy instances, each lemmy instance is better with their own set of rules or identities.

I think what matters is funding and donation, not monthly active users. As long as people keep donating, the servers stay up and stay ad-free. Lemmy can cater to a specific paying user base and thrive from there. More active users that do not donate can be detrimental as the revenue does not scale by user base as it is not ad-driven but donation driven. More users can indeed increase potential donations but it’s not a guarantee.

Lemmy.world is very search engine friendly. If you add lemmy to your search, it will usually surface lemmy world