Also hashtags don’t help federation at all, groups/communities will “boost” the post so it federates to all the followers

if an instance has no users and only communities, then it’s less likely to be defederated by anyone, and easier to manage

I do the same thing (also because I don’t want to pay for tons of storage space lol) https://lemmy.mods4ever.com/communities

Proxying is a separate option from caching. I think it was added in 0.19.5

It’s way easier to notice and defed when you can see these fake usernames

You can set a Lemmy server to proxy image requests

Isn’t that what you want for a Facebook replacement though?

I guess being able to browse public profiles and posts would be good, but if it’s like Facebook then wouldn’t most people be using their real names and posting about semi-personal IRL stuff?

You’d want that stuff to only show for your friends, and maybe friends of friends