> The fact they own the software means they can make it easier or harder to surprise or spread certain messages, and do so in very subtle ways.

I just can’t imagine how, honestly! It’s not exactly trivial to programmatically hinder certain messages in a way that others won’t notice and complain about — as they did when Lemmy had hard-coded blacklists for slurs.

If anything, they'd abuse their control of the Lemmy.ml server, like you said.