I just think it’s important to remember that, while federation and interoperability are HUGE HUGE features (and, ultimately, the purpose) of Lemmy but I do believe that it’s important to remember that there is still incredible value in a Lemmy instance that is siloed to a particular group of people and/or whitelist federated with specific other servers.
There is power in being able to create a private community with this functionality and use-cases for organizations, private groups, and whoever else to have siloed instances like this.
You could have a Lemmy server on-prem at work just for relevant work things with coworkers. You could make one for your neighborhood. You could make servers dedicated to mutual aid that federate with only eachother to further your cause and reach.
This is probably what the internet was supposed to be.