

Why would anyone want that? You mention “Lemmy’s core values of decentralization, privacy, and user autonomy”, but surely another “core value” is being a general use forum. One main benefit of a forum is that you can have discussions without necessarily having to have everyone together in the same place at the same time. Live voice chat is the opposite, so surely something like that would be better off as a feature of a platform that focuses more on live interaction.
Moderation challenges would be absolutely immense of course, that is not in question. Moderating a voice chat is all but impossible in a setting where anyone can join without an invite, and accounts are free and easy to create.
Really? When I have posted comments on /r/RedditAlternatives about Lemmy being too complicated and that it won’t gain traction, I’ve been getting downvotes. Despite saying I use it.
Concepts like federation and instances are definitely part of the problem. Reddit is quite easy to understand. Make an account on the website (or not), go to /r/all or type in /r/whatever, and away you go. Lemmy is not that easy to understand. Many people that could be interested in Lemmy don’t have any idea what the different instances are or which they should use, so they just give up.
Lemmy doesn’t need to take off like reddit did, but those touting it as the next big thing are being very optimistic. The barrier to understanding is just too high.