it's an archipelagic confederation, so yes!

That's a very good question. It's as anarchist as modern social media gets.

The thing is the moderators. In an anarchist utopia, they would take turns, be recallable and have to justify their decisions.

The last point is true for some instances but not all (think of the vegan cat food debate on .world verses how .ml blocks voices critical of China and Russia).

The other two points – to my knowledge – barely happen. This isn't a huge problem, as I said, it's as anarchist as social media comes. But it contains the risk of a centralized power. Sure, you can always leave the instance (even easier than on mastodon where you lose your followers) but this resembles the Libertarian "freedom" to choose your oppressor. Internal equality is very important.

This isn't to criticize Lemmy. It's overall very good and as anarchist as realistically and practically possible. But to showcase the anarchist ideal of councils and to spotlight the minor flaws we should be aware of, even if there is no perfect solution.

Most grass roots societies are like that. It's "self" ruling so to speak. At least from what I have gathered and read. It's been awhile since I did deep dive on it.

No just free association. But having no alternatives to legitimate needs, like participating in our civilization's free speech discourse through the internet, free association doesn't help. So before the fediverse you were "forced" to associate with reddit/facebook/twitter or have little association at all.

I'm not sure how anarchism would work for a social media platform. Everyone is a mod? Everyone can post anything and can delete anything? 😀

I believe generally as a philosophy anarchism only makes sense as all authority should be challenged and needs to be justified or be abolished. The amount of authority justified and needed might be relative to the level of "enlightenment" of the participants.