Lemmy is great, but there are some “subreddits” that would be great to implement on Lemmy. This means I will have to add them myself and be a moderator.
How much work will this likely involve? Assume moderately popular. Both in “hours per day” and “frustration”.
Are there legal risks?
Assume I am in the USA, in a state with a functioning government.
Thank you!
As far as dealing with reports and removing inappropriate content, it scales exponentially with the popularity of the community and the contentiousness of the topic. Most communities require little or no effort on this front. A community like !jazz@lemmy.world might get a couple reports per year as people argue about whether specific posts fit the genre. A larger community like !games@sh.itjust.works gets a few reports per month due to users bickering. Really big communities like !technology@lemmy.world or !world@lemmy.world get targeted by trolls and spammers and are a daily chore.
You should look at the community modlogs for a few communities that are similar to the ones you want to start. That will give you a feel for how busy you may be.
The bigger burden is going to be keeping your new communities fresh with new posts. That work is much harder than moderation, in my experience. Look at !superbowl@lemmy.world: it has 4.9k subscribers but most of the content comes from a single user with a passion for the topic. Same with !science_memes@mander.xyz and many others.