Love Lemmy and want to see it grow, and it might be able to slow down a poorly-made site, but I doubt we have the raw clicks to cause an issue on properly-maintained websites.
Not even Reddit can hug properly hosted websites anymore. Our server architecture is quite a bit more robust and flexible now than it was even just 5 or 6 years ago.
have the raw clicks to cause an issue on properly-maintained websites.
That's been true of Reddit forever now as well, I only ever remember the Hug of Death actually affecting only small time websites that probably had maybe like 3 people running it.
Links to anything else was usually just fine, barring a few exceptions because even the big boys make fuck ups too
But nowadays the bar to "properly maintained" is lower with more mature, robust and easier to use tooling
With all the devs and anarchists on Lemmy, we don't necessarily need huge numbers to take down a website. Just 1 determined individual who knows their way around a botnet. 😌